Keith Johnstone-Impro_ Improvisation and the Theatre-Methuen Drama (1981).pdf (PDFy mirror)

Impro

'Impro is the most dynamic, funny, wise, practical and provocative book
on theatre craft that I have ever read' (James Roose-Evans).

Keith Johnstone's involvement with the theatre began when George
Devme and Tony Richardson, artistic directors of the Royal Court
Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years
later he was himself Associate Artistic Director, working as a play-
reader and director, in particular helping to run the Writers' Group.
The improvisatory techniques and exercises evolved there to foster
spontaneity and narrative skills were developed further in the actors'
studio, then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately '
in the founding of a company of performers, called The Theatre
Machine.

Divided into four sections, *Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills'
and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group
might approach them, the book sets out the specific techniques and
exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most
stimulating. The result is both an ideas book and a fascinating explora-
tion of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

'The book's incredible achievement is its success in making improvisa-
tion re-live on the page . . . Get Mr Johnstone's fascinating manual and
I promise you that if you open at the first: page and begin to read you
will not put it down until the final page.' (Yorkshire Post)

'He suggests a hundred practical techniques for encouraging spon-
taneity and originality by catching the subconscious unawares. But what
makes the book such fun is the teacher's wit. Here is an inexhaustible
supply of zany suggestions for unfreezing the petrified imagination. ,
(Daily Telegraph)

The from cover shows a moment front The Defeat of Gianr Big Nose, an
improvised children's play presented by Keith Johnstone*$ Loose Moose
Theatre Company in Calgary, Alberta. Photo by Deborah A. lozzu

Other books in ihis series

Clive Barker
THEATRE GAMES

Jean Benedetti

STANISLAVSKI: AN INTRODUCTION
STANISLAVSKI: A BIOGRAPHY

Peter Brook

THE SHIFTING POINT

Tony Coult and Baz Kershaw
ENGINEERS OF THE IMAGINATION
The Welfare State Handbook

Jerzy Grotowski

TOWARDS A POOR THEATRE

John Hodgson and Ernest Richards
IMPROVISATION

Constantin Stanislavski
AN ACTOR PREPARES
BUILDING A CHARACTER
CREATING A ROLE
MY LIFE IN ART
STANISLAVSKFS LEGACY

IMPRO

Improvisation and the Theatre
KEITH JOHNSTONE

With an Introduction by
IRVING WARDLE

METHUEN DRAMA

A METHUEN PAPERBACK

First published in paperback in 1981 by Eyre Methuen Ltd.
Reprinted 1982, rg8s, rgSs, 1987

Reprinted in 1989 by Methuen Drama^

Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3 6RB

Originally published in hardback by Faber and Faber Ltd in zg 79

Corrected for this edition by the author

Copyright © J979, 1981 by Keith Johnstone

Introduction © 7979 by Irving Wardle

Printed in Great Britain by

Hazell Watson & Viney Limited

Member of BPCC Limited

Aylesbury, Bucks, England

ISBN 0413 46430 x

Contents

INTRODUCTION 9
NOTES ON MYSELF
STATUS 33
SPONTANEITY 75
NARRATIVE SKILLS
MASKS AND TRANCE
APPENDIX 206

Introduction

If teachers were honoured in the British theatre along-
side directors, designers, and playwrights, Keith Johnstone would be
as familiar a name as are those of John Dexter, Jocelyn Herbert,
Edward Bond and the other young talents who were drawn to the
great lodestone of the Royal Court Theatre in the late 1950s. As head
of the Court's script department, Johnstone played a crucial part in
the development of the 'writers' theatre', but to the general public he
was known only as the author of occasional and less than triumphant
Court plays like Brixham Regatta and Performing Giant. As he
recounts in this book, he started as a writer who lost the ability to
write, and then ran into the same melancholy impasse again when he
turned to directing.
What follows is the story of his escape.

I first met Johnstone shortly after he had joined the Court as a
ios-a-script play-reader, and he struck me then as a revolutionary
idealist looking around for a guillotine. He saw corruption every-
where. John Arden, a fellow play-reader at that time, recalls him as
'George Devine's subsidised extremist, or Keeper of the King's
Conscience'. The Court then set up its Writers' Group and Actors'
Studio, run by Johnstone and William Gaskill, and attended by
Arden, Ann Jellicoe and other writers of the Court's first wave. This
was the turning point. 'Keith', Gaskill says, 'started to teach his own
particular style of improvisation, much of it based on fairy stories,
word associations, free associations, intuitive responses, and later he
taught mask work as well. All his work has been to encourage the
rediscovery of the imaginative response in the adult; the refinding of
the power of the child's creativity. Blake is his prophet and Edward
Bond his pupil.'

Johnstone's all-important first move was to banish aimless dis-
cussion and transform the meetings to enactment sessions; it was
what happened that mattered, not what anybody said about it. 'It is
hard now to remember how fresh this idea was in 1958,' Ann Jellicoe
says, 'but it chimed in with my own way of thinking.' Other members
were Arnold Wesker, Wole Soyinka, and David Cregan as well as

10 INTRODUCTION

Bond who now acknowledges Johnstone as a 'catalyst who made our
experience malleable by ourselves'. As an example, he cites an exercise
in blindness which he later incorporated in his play Lear; and one can
pile up examples from Arden, Jellicoe, and Wesker of episodes or
whole plays deriving from the group's work. For Cregan, Johnstone
'knew how to unlock Dionysus': which came to the same thing as
learning how to unlock himself.

From such examples one can form some idea of the special place
that teaching occupied in Devine's Royal Court; and how, in John-
stone's case, it was the means by which he liberated himself in the
act of liberating others. He now hands over his hard-won bunch of
keys to the general reader. This book is the fruit of twenty years'
patient and original work; a wise, practical, and hilariously funny
guide to imaginative survival. For anyone of the 'artist type' who has
shared the author's experience of seeing his gift apparently curl up
and die, it is essential reading.

One of Johnstone's plays is about an impotent old recluse, the
master of a desolate castle, who has had the foresight to stock his
deep-freeze with sperm. There is a power-cut and one of the sperm
escapes into a goldfish bowl and then into the moat where it grows to
giant size and proceeds to a whale of a life on the high seas.

That, in a nut-shell, is the Johnstone doctrine. You are not imagina-
tively impotent until you are dead; you are only frozen up. Switch off
the no-saying intellect and welcome the unconscious as a friend: it
will lead you to places you never dreamed of, and produce results
more 'original' than anything you could achieve by aiming at origin-
ality.

Open the book at any of the exercises and you will see how the
unconscious delivers the goods. Here arc a group of hippopotamuses
knitting pullovers from barbed wire, and a patient suffering from
woodworm who infects the doctor's furniture. There are poems tran-
scribed from thin air, masked actors magicked back to childhood,
Victorian melodrama played in extempore verse. At the point where
rational narrative would come to a stop, Johnstone's stories carry on
cheerfully into the unknown. If a desperate schoolmaster kills himself
he will find a plenary session of the school governors awaiting him at
the pearly gates. Or if our hero is swallowed by a monster, he will
change into a heroic turd and soldier on to fresh adventures.

I have seen none of this material in performance, either by students
or by Johnstone's Theatre Machine company; and one of the book's
achievements is its success in making improvisations re-live on the

INTRODUCTION II

page. Like all great advocates of the unconscious, Johnstone is a
sturdy rationalist. He brings a keen intellect, nourished on anthro-
pology and psychology, to the task of demolishing intellectualism in
the theatre. And where no technical vocabulary exists, he develops
his own down-to-earth shorthand to give a simple name to the
indescribable. In rediscovering the imaginative world of childhood,
he has re-examined the structural elements that bind that world
together. What is a story? What makes people laugh? What relation-
ships hold an audience's interest, and why? How does an improviser
think up what comes next? Is conflict dramatically necessary? (The
answer is No.)

To these and other fundamental questions the book returns un-
expected and invariably useful answers. Answers that extend theatre
into the transactions of everyday life. One's first impulse on reading
about these actors' games is to go and try them out on the kids, or to
have a go yourself. Like this.

From anthills in the north

I come with wand in hand

to slay all people there

that I could understand.

At last one heap was left

Untamed by all my foes

until I caught the bees

and dealt them mighty blows.
That was a nonstop poem written in fifty seconds flat. It may not
be much, but it is more than I have ever got from any other text-book
on the imagination. The difference is that Johnstone's analysis is not
concerned with results, but with showing you how to do it; and his
work ranks as a pioneer contribution to the exceedingly sparse litera-
ture of comic theory from which comic practitioners really have some-
thing to learn. It certainly has more to offer than Meredith, Bergson,
or Freud, to whom the suicidal hero of Heathcote Williams's Hancock's
Last Half Hour turns in his time of need; dipping hopefully into
Jokes and their Connection with the Unconscious, and then dropping the
book with the despairing cry, 'How would he do second house at the
Glasgow Empire?' If Hancock had picked up this book, there might
have been a happy ending.

IRVING WARDLE

Notes on Myself

As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull.
I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in
as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable
consequence of age — just as the lens of the eye is bound gradually to
dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

I've since found tricks that can make the world blaze up again in
about fifteen seconds, and the effects last for hours. For example, if I
have a group of students who are feeling fairly safe and comfortable
with each other, I get them to pace about the room shouting out the
wrong name for everything that their eyes light on. Maybe there's
time to shout out ten wrong names before I stop them. Then I ask
whether other people look larger or smaller — almost everyone sees
people as different sizes, mostly as smaller. 'Do the outlines look
sharper or more blurred?' I ask, and everyone agrees that the outlines
are many times sharper. 'What about the colours?' Everyone agrees
there's far more colour, and that the colours are more intense. Often
the size and shape of the room will seem to have changed, too. The
students are amazed that such a strong transformation can be effected
by such primitive means — and especially that the effects last so long.
I tell them that they only have to think about the exercise for the
effects to appear again.

My own rediscovery of the visionary world took longer. At a time
when I seemed to have lost all my talents as a creative artist I was driven
to investigate my mental images. I started with the hypnagogic ones —
the pictures that appear to many people at the threshold of sleep.
They interest me because they didn't appear in any predictable
sequence; I was interested in their spontaneity.

It's not easy to observe hypnagogic images, because once you see
one and think 'There !' you wake up a little and the image disappears.
You have to attend to the images without verbalising about them, so I
learned to 'hold the mind still' like a hunter waiting in a forest.

One afternoon I was lying on my bed and investigating the effects
of anxiety on the musculature (how do you spend your afternoons?). I
relaxing myself and conjuring up horrific images. I had recalled

14 NOTES ON MYSELF

an eye operation I'd had under local anaesthetic, when suddenly I
thought of attending to my mental images just as I had to the hypna-
gogic ones. The effect was astounding. They had all sorts of detail
that I hadn't known about, and that I certainly hadn't chosen to be
there. The surgeons' faces were distorted, their masks were thrusting
out as if there were snouts beneath them! The effect was so interesting
that I persisted. I thought of a house, and attended to the image and
saw the doors and windows bricked in, but the chimney still smoking
(a symbol for my inhibited state at the time?). I thought of another
house and saw a terrifying figure in the doorway. I looked in the
windows and saw strange rooms in amazing detail.

When you ask people to think of an image, their eyes often move in a
particular direction, often up and to the side. I was placing my
mental images upwards and to the right— that's the space in which I
'thought' of them. When I attended to them they moved into the
'front' of my mind. Obviously, at some time in my childhood my
mental images had frightened me, and I'd displaced them, I'd trained
myself not to look at them. When I had an image I knew what was
there, so I didn't need to look at it— that's how I deluded myself that
my creativity was under my own control.

After a lot of practice at attending to the images I conjured up, I
belatedly thought of attending to the reality around me. Then the
deadness and greyness immediately sloughed off— yet I'd thought I'd
never move through a visionary world again, that I'd lost it. In my
case it was largely my interest in art that had destroyed any life m the
world around me. I'd learned perspective, and about balance, and
composition. It was as if I'd learned to redesign everything, to reshape
it so that I saw what ought to be there, which of course is much inferior
to what is there. The dullness was not an inevitable consequence of
age, but of education. 1

Contrariness

At about the age of nine I decided never to believe any-
thing because it was convenient. I began reversing every statement to
see if the opposite was also true. This is so much a habit with me that
I hardly notice I'm doing it any more. As soon as you put a 'not' into
an assertion, a whole range of other possibilities opens out-especially
in drama, where everything is supposition anyway. When I began
teaching, it was very natural for me to reverse everything my own
teachers had done. I got my actors to make faces, insult each other,
always to leap before they looked, to scream and shout and misbehave

NOTES ON MYSELF 15
in all sorts of ingenious ways. It was like having a whole tradition of
improvisation teaching behind me. In a normal education everything
is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.

Cripples

I made a two-minute film for a TV programme. It was
all in one shot, no cuts. Everyone who saw it roared with laughter.
There were people rolling on the cutting-room floor, holding their
sides. Once they'd recovered, they'd say 'No, no, it's very funny but
we can't show thatV

The film showed three misshapen but gleeful cripples who were
leaping about and hugging each other. The camera panned slightly to
reveal that they were hiding around a corner and waiting for a normal
person who was approaching. When he drew level, the cripples leaped
on him, and bashed him to pulp with long balloons. Then they helped
him up, as battered and twisted as they were, and they shook hands
with him, and the four of them waited for the next person.

A Psychotic Girl

I once had a close rapport with a teenager who seemed
'mad' when she was with other people, but relatively normal when she
was with me. I treated her rather as I would a Mask (see Masks, page
143)— that is to say, I was gentle, and I didn't try to impose my reality
on her. One thing that amazed me was her perceptiveness about other
people — it was as if she was a body-language expert. She described
things about them which she read from their movement and postures
that I later found to be true, although this was at the beginning of a
summer school and none of us had ever met before.

I'm remembering her now because of an interaction she had with a
very gentle, motherly schoolteacher. I had to leave for a few minutes,
so I gave the teenager my watch and said she could use it to see I was
away only a very short time, and that the schoolteacher would look
after her. We were in a beautiful garden (where the teenager had just
seen God) and the teacher picked a flower and said: 'Look at the
pretty flower, Betty.'

Betty, filled with spiritual radiance, said, 'All the flowers are
beautiful.'

'Ah,' said the teacher, blocking her, 'but this flower is especially
beautiful.'

Betty rolled on the ground screaming, and it took a while to calm

16 NOTES ON MYSELF

her. Nobody seemed to notice that she was screaming 'Can't you see?
Can't you see !'

In the gentlest possible way, this teacher had been very violent.
She was insisting on categorising, and on selecting. Actually it is crazy
to insist that one flower is especially beautiful in a whole garden of
flowers, but the teacher is allowed to do this, and is not perceived by
sane people as violent. Grown-ups are expected to distort the per-
ceptions of the child in this way. Since then I've noticed such be-
haviour constantly, but it took the mad girl to open my eyes to it.

'Education' as a Substance

People think of good and bad teachers as engaged in
the same activity, as if education was a substance, and that bad teachers
supply a little of the substance, and good teachers supply a lot. This
makes it difficult to understand that education can be a destructive
process, and that bad teachers are wrecking talent, and that good and
bad teachers are engaged in opposite activities. (I saw a teacher relax
his students on the floor, and then test for relaxation by lifting their
feet eighteen inches into the air and dropping their heels on the
concrete.)

Growing Up

As I grew up I began to feel uncomfortable. I had to
use conscious effort to 'stand up straight'. I thought that adults were
superior to children, and that the problems that worried me would
gradually correct themselves. It was very upsetting to realise that if I
was going to change for the better then I'd have to do it myself.

I found I had some severe speech defects, worse than other people's
(I was eventually treated at a speech hospital). I began to understand
that there really was something wrong with my body, I began to see
myself as crippled in the use of myself (just as a great violinist would
play better on a cheap violin than I would on a Strad). My breathing
was inhibited, my voice and posture were wrecked, something was
seriously wrong with my imagination— it was becoming difficult actu-
ally to get ideas. How could this have happened when the state had
spent so much money educating me?

Other people seemed to have no insight into my problems. All my
teachers cared about was whether I was a winner. I wanted to stand
like Gary Cooper, and to be confident, and to know how to send the
soup back when it was cold without making the waiter feel obliged to
spit in it. I'd left school with worse posture, and a worse voice, with

NOTES ON MYSELF 17
worse movement and far less spontaneity than when I'd entered it.
Could teaching have had a negative effect?

Emotion

One day, when I was eighteen, I was reading a book
and I began to weep. I was astounded. I'd had no idea that literature
could affect me in such a way. If I'd have wept over a poem in class
the teacher would have been appalled. I realised that my school had
been teaching me not to respond.

(In some universities students unconsciously learn to copy the
physical attitudes of their professors, leaning back away from the play
or film they're watching, and crossing their arms tighdy, and tilting
their heads back. Such postures help them to feel less 'involved', less
'subjective'. The response of untutored people is infinitely superior.)

Intelligence

I tried to resist my schooling, but I accepted the idea
that my intelligence was the most important part of me. I tried to be
clever in everything I did. The damage was greatest in areas where my
interests and the school's seemed to coincide : in writing, for example
(I wrote and rewrote, and lost all my fluency). I forgot that inspiration
isn't intellectual, that you don't have to be perfect. In the end I was
reluctant to attempt anything for fear of failure, and my first thoughts
never seemed good enough. Everything had to be corrected and
brought into line.

The spell broke when I was in my early twenties. I saw a perform-
ance of Dovzhenko's Earth, a film which is a closed book for many
people, but which threw me into a state of exaltation and confusion.
There is a sequence in which the hero, Vassily, walks alone in the
twilight. We know he's in danger, and we have just seen him com-
forting his wife, who rolled her eyes like a frightened animal. There are
shots of mist moving eerily on water, and silent horses stretching their
necks, and corn-stooks against the dusky sky. Then, amazingly,
peasants lying side by side, the men with their hands inside the
women's blouses and motionless, with idiotic smiles on their faces as
they stare at the twilight. Vassily, dressed in black, walks through the
Chagall village, and the dust curls up in little clouds around his feet
and he is dark against the moonlit road, and he is filled with the same
ecstasy as the peasants. He walks and walks and the film cuts and cuts
until he walks out of frame. Then the camera moves back, and we see
stop. The fact that he walks for so long, and that the image is so

18 NOTES ON MYSELF

beautiful, linked up with my own experience of being alone in the
twilight— the gap between the worlds. Then Vassily walks again, but
after a short time he begins to dance, and the dance is skilled, and like
an act of thanksgiving. The dust swirls around his feet, so that he's
like an Indian god, like Siva— and with the man dancing alone in the
clouds of dust something unlocked in me. In one moment I knew
that the valuing of men by their intelligence is crazy, that the peasants
watching the night sky might feel more than I feel, that the man who
dances might be superior to myself— word-bound and unable to
dance. From then on I noticed how warped many people of great
intelligence are, and I began to value people for their actions, rather
than their thoughts.

Anthony Stirling

I felt crippled, and 'unfit' for life, so I decided to
become a teacher. I wanted more time to sort myself out, and I was
convinced that the training college would teach me to speak clearly,
and to stand naturally, and to be confident, and how to improve my
teaching skills. Common sense assured me of this, but I was quite
wrong. It was only by luck that I had a brilliant art teacher called
Anthony Stirling, and then all my work stemmed from his example.
It wasn't so much what he taught, as what he did. For the first time in
my life I was in the hands of a great teacher.

I'll describe the first lesson he gave us, which was unforgettable
and completely disorientating.

He treated us like a class of eight-year-olds, which I didn't like,
but which I thought I understood— 'He's letting us know what it feels
like to be on the receiving end,' I thought.

He made us mix up a thick 'jammy' black paint and asked us to
imagine a clown on a one wheeled bicycle who pedals through the
paint, and on to our sheets of paper. 'Don't paint the clown,' he said,
'paint the mark he leaves on your paper!'

I was wanting to demonstrate my skill, because I'd always been
'good at art', and I wanted him to know that I was a worthy student.
This exercise annoyed me because how could I demonstrate my skill?
I could paint the clown, but who cared about the tyre-marks?

'He cycles on and off your paper,' said Stirling, 'and he does all sorts
of tricks, so the lines he leaves on your paper are very interesting . . .'

Everyone's paper was covered with a mess of black lines— except
mine, since I'd tried to be original by mixing up a blue. Stirling was
scathing about my inability to mix up a black, which irritated me.

NOTES ON MYSELF 19
Then he asked us to put colours in all the shapes the clown had made.
'What kind of colours?'
'Any colours.'

*Yeah . . . but ... er ... we don't know what colours to choose.'

'Nice colours, nasty colours, whatever you like.'

We decided to humour him. When my paper was coloured I found
that the blue had disappeared, so I repainted the outlines black.

'Johnstone's found the value of a strong outline,' said Stirling, which
really annoyed me. I could see that everyone's paper was getting into
a soggy mess, and that mine was no worse than anybody else's— but
no better.

'Put patterns on all the colours,' said Stirling. The man seemed to
be an idiot. Was he teasing us?
'What sort of patterns?'
'Any patterns.'

We couldn't seem to start. There were about ten of us, all strangers
to each other, and in the hands of this madman.
'We don't know what to do.'
'Surely it's easy to think of patterns.'

We wanted to get it right. 'What sort of patterns do you want?'

'It's up to you.' He had to explain patiently to us that it really was
our choice. I remember him asking us to think of our shapes as fields
seen from the air if that helped, which it didn't. Somehow we finished
the exercises, and wandered around looking at our daubs rather
glumly, but Stirling seemed quite unperturbed. He went to a cupboard
and took out armfuls of paintings and spread them around the floor,
and it was the same exercise done by other students. The colours were
so beautiful, and the patterns were so inventive — clearly they had
been done by some advanced class. 'What a great idea,' I thought,
'making us screw up in this way, and then letting us realise that there
was something that we could learn, since the advanced students were
so much better !' Maybe I exaggerate when I remember how beautiful
the paintings were, but I was seeing them immediately after my fail-
ure. Then I noticed that these little masterpieces were signed in very
scrawly writing. 'Wait a minute,' I said, 'these are by young children!'
They were all by eight-year-olds! It was just an exercise to encourage
them to use the whole area of the paper, but they'd done it with such
love and taste and care and sensitivity. I was speechless. Something
happened to me in that moment from which I have never recovered.
It was the final confirmation that my education had been a destructive
process.

20 NOTES ON MYSELF

Stirling believed that the art was 'in' the child, and that it wasn't
something to be imposed by an adult. The teacher was not superior to
the child, and should never demonstrate, and should not impose
values: 'This is good, this is bad . . .'

'But supposing a child wants to learn how to draw a tree?'

'Send him out to look at one. Let him climb one. Let him touch it.'

'But if he still can't draw one?'

'Let him model it in clay.'

The implication of Stirling's attitude was that the student should
never experience failure. The teacher's skill lay in presenting ex-
periences in such a way that the student was bound to succeed.
Stirling recommended that we read the Too te Ching. It seems to me
now that he was practically using it as his teaching manual. Here are
some extracts: '. . . The sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking

no action and practises the teaching that uses no words When

his task is accomplished and his work done the people all say, "It
happened to us naturally" .... I take no action and the people are
transformed of themselves; I prefer stillness and the people are
rectified of themselves; I am not meddlesome and the people prosper
of themselves. I am free from desire and the people of themselves
become simple like the uncarved block ... One who excels in employ-
ing others humbles himself before them. This is known as the virtue
of non-contention; this is known as making use of the efforts of

others To know yet to think that one does not know is best

The sage does not hoard. Having bestowed all he has on others, he
has yet more; having given all he has to others, he is richer still. The
way of heaven benefits and does not harm; the way of the sage is
bountiful and does not contend.' (Translated by C. D. Lau, Penguin,
1969.)

Being a Teacher

I chose to teach in Battersea, a working-class area that
most new teachers avoided— but I'd been a postman there, and I
loved the place.

My new colleagues bewildered me. 'Never tell people you re a
teacher!' they said. 'If they find you're a teacher in the pub, they'll
all move away !' It was true ! I'd believed that teachers were respected
figures, but in Battersea they were likely to be feared or hated. I liked
my colleagues, but they had a colonist's attitude to the children; they
referred to them as 'poor stock', and they disliked exactly those
children I found most inventive. If a child is creative he's likely to be
more difficult to control, but that isn't a reason for disliking him. My

NOTES ON MYSELF 21
colleagues had a poor view of themselves : again and again I heard them
say, 'Man among boys; boy among men' when describing their
condition. I came to see that their unhappiness, and lack of accept-
ance in the community, came from a feeling that they were irrelevant,
or rather that the school was something middle class being forcibly
imposed on to the working-class culture. Everyone seemed to accept
that if you could educate one of these children you'd remove him
away from his parents (which is what my education had done for me).
Educated people were snobs, and many parents didn't want their
children alienated from them.

Like most new teachers, I was given the class no one else wanted.
Mine was a mix of twenty-six 'average' eight-year-olds, and twenty
'backward' ten-year-olds whom the school had written off as ineduc-
able. Some of the ten-year-olds couldn't write their names after five
years of schooling. I'm sure Professor Skinner could teach even
pigeons to type out their names in a couple of weeks, so I couldn't
believe that these children were really dull: it was more likely that
they were putting up a resistance. One astounding thing was the way
cowed and dead-looking children would suddenly brighten up and
look intelligent when they weren't being asked to learn. When they
were cleaning out the fish tank, they looked fine. When writing a
sentence, they looked numb and defeated.

Almost all teachers, even if they weren't very bright, got along
reasonably well as schoolchildren, so presumably it's difficult for them
to identify with the children who fail. My case was peculiar in that
I'd apparently been exceptionally intelligent up to the age of eleven,
winning all the prizes (which embarrassed me, since I thought they
should be given to the dull children as compensation) and being
teacher's pet, and so on. Then, spectacularly, I'd suddenly come bottom
of the class— 'down among the dregs', as my headmaster described it.
He never forgave me. I was puzzled too, but gradually I realised that
I wouldn't work for people I didn't like. Over the years my work
gradually improved, but I never fulfilled my promise. When I liked
a particular teacher and won a prize, the head would say : 'Johnstone
is taking this prize away from the boys who deserve it!' If you've
been bottom of the class for years it gives you a different perspective :
I was friends with boys who were failures, and nothing would induce
me to write them off as 'useless' or 'ineducable'. My 'failure' was a
survival tactic, and without it I would probably never have worked my
way out of the trap that my education had set for me. I would have ended
up with a lot more of my consciousness blocked off from me than now.

22 NOTES ON MYSELF

I was determined that my classes shouldn't be dull, so I used to jump
about and wave my arms, and generally stir things up— which is
exciting, but bad for discipline. If you shove an inexperienced teacher
into the toughest class, he either sinks or swims. However idealistic
he is, he tends to clutch at traditional ways of enforcing discipline.
My problem was to resist the pressures that would turn me into a
conventional teacher. I had to establish a quite different relationship
before I could hope to release the creativity that was so apparent in the
children when they weren't thinking of themselves as 'being educated'.

I didn't see why Stirling's ideas shouldn't apply to all areas, and in
particular to writing: literacy was clearly of great importance, and
anyway writing interested me, and I wanted to infect the children with
enthusiasm. I tried getting them to send secret notes to each other,
and write rude comments about me, and so on, but the results were
nil. One day I took my typewriter and my art books into the class, and
said I'd type out anything they wanted to write about the pictures. As
an afterthought, I said I'd also type out their dreams— and suddenly
they were actually wanting to write. I typed out everything exactly as
they wrote it, including the spelling mistakes, until they caught me.
Typing out spelling mistakes was a weird idea in the early fifties (and
probably now)— but it worked. The pressure to get things right was
coming from the children, not the teacher. I was amazed at the in-
tensity of feeling and outrage the children expressed, and their
determination to be correct, because no one would have dreamt that
they cared. Even the illiterates were getting their friends to spell out
every word for them. I scrapped the time-table, and for a month they
wrote for hours every day. I had to force them out of the classroom to
take breaks. When I hear that children only have an attention span of
ten minutes, or whatever, I'm amazed. Ten minutes is the attention
span of bored children, which is what they usually are in school-
hence the misbehaviour.

I was even more astounded by the quality of the things the children
wrote. I'd never seen any examples of children's writing during my
training; I thought it was a hoax (one of my colleagues must have
smuggled a book of modern verse in!). By far the best work came from
the 'ineducable' ten-year-olds. At the end of my first year the Div-
isional Officer refused to end my probation. He'd found my class
doing arithmetic with masks over their faces— they'd made them in
art class and I didn't see why they shouldn't wear them. There was a
cardboard tunnel he was supposed to crawl through (because the
classroom was doubling as an igloo), and an imaginary hole in the

NOTES ON MYSELF 23
floor that he refused to walk around. I'd stuck all the art paper to-
gether and pinned it along the back wall, and when a child got bored
he'd leave what he was doing and stick some more leaves on the burn-
ing forest.

My headmaster had discouraged my ambition to become a teacher :
'You're not the right type,' he said, 'not the right type at all.' Now it
looked as if I was going to be rejected officially. Fortunately the
school was inspected, and Her Majesty's Inspector thought that my
class were doing the most interesting work. I remember one incident
that struck him as amazing: the children screaming out that there
were only three chickens drawn on the blackboard, while I was
insisting that there were five (two were still inside the hen-house).
Then the children started scribbling furiously away, writing stories
about chickens, and shouting out any words they wanted spelt on the
blackboard. I shouldn't think half of them had ever seen a chicken,
but it delighted the Inspector. 'You realise that they're trying to
throw me out,' I said, and he fixed it so that I wasn't bothered again.

Stirling's 'non-interference' worked in every area where I applied
it: piano teaching for example. I worked with Marc Wilkinson, the
composer (he became director of music at the National Theatre), and
his tape recorder played the same sort of role that my typewriter had.
He soon had a collection of tapes as surprising as the children's
poems had been. I assembled a group of children by asking each
teacher for the children he couldn't stand ; and although everyone was
amazed at such a selection method, the group proved to be very
talented, and they learned with amazing speed. After twenty minutes
a boy hammered out a discordant march and the rest shouted, 'It's the
Japanese soldiers from the film on Saturday!' Which it was. We
invented many games — like one child making sounds for water and
another putting the 'fish' in it. Sometimes we got them to feel ob-
jects with their eyes shut, and got them to play what it felt like so that
the others could guess. Other teachers were amazed by the enthus-
iasm and talent shown by these 'dull' children.

The Royal Court Theatre

In 1956 the Royal Court Theatre was commissioning
plays from established novelists (Nigel Dennis, Angus Wilson), and
Lindsay Anderson suggested that they should stop playing safe and
commission an unknown — me.

I'd had very bad experiences in the theatre, but there was one play
I'd liked: Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which seemed entirely lucid

24 NOTES ON MYSELF

and pertinent to my own problems. I was trying to be a painter at the
time, and my artist friends all agreed that Beckett must be a very
young man, one of our contemporaries, since he understood our feel-
ings so well. Because I didn't like the theatre— it seemed so much
feebler than, say, the films of Kurosawa, or Keaton— I didn't at first
accept the Royal Court's commission; but then I ran out of money, so
I wrote a play strongly influenced by Beckett (who once wrote to me,
saying that 'a stage is an area of maximum verbal presence, and maxi-
mum corporeal presence'— the word 'corporeal' really delighting me).

My play was called Brixkam Regatta, and I remember Devine thumb-
ing through the notices and saying that it was sex that had been in-
tolerable to the Victorians, and that 'whatever it is now, Keith is
writing about it'. I was amazed that most critics were so hostile. I'd
been illustrating a theme of Blake's : 'Alas ! The time will come when a
man's worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family . . .'
But in 1958 such a view was unacceptable. Ten years later, when I
directed the play at the Mermaid, it didn't seem at all shocking: its
ideas had become commonplace.

I've been often told how weird and silent I seemed to many people,
but Devine was amused by my ideas (many of which came from Stir-
ling). I'd argue that a director should never demonstrate anything to
an actor, that a director should allow the actor to make his own
discoveries, that the actor should think he'd done all the work himself.
I objected to the idea that the director should work out the moves
before the production started. I said that if an actor forgot a move that
had been decided on, then the move was probably wrong. Later I
argued that moves weren't important, that with only a couple of
actors on a stage, why did it matter where they moved anyway? I
explained that Hamlet in Russian can be just as impressive, so were
the words really of first importance? I said that the set was no more
important than the apparatus in the circus. I wasn't saying much that
was new, but I didn't know that, and certainly such thoughts weren't
fashionable at the rime. I remember Devine going round the theatre
chuckling that 'Keith thinks King Lear should have a happy ending ! V
They were surprised that someone so inexperienced as myself
should have become their best play-reader. Tony Richardson, then
Devine's Associate Director, once thanked me because I was taking
such a load off them. I was successful precisely because I didn't
exercise my taste. I would first read plays as quickly as possible, and
categorise them as pseudo-Pinter, fake-Osborne, phoney-Beckett, and
so on. Any play that seemed to come from the author's own ex-

NOTES ON MYSELF 2$
perience I'd then read attentively, and either leave it in Devine's
office or, if I didn't like it, give it to someone else to read. As ninety-
nine per cent of the plays submitted were just cribs from other people,
the job was easy. I had expected that there'd be a very gentle gradation
from awful to excellent, and that I'd be involved in a lot of heart-
searching. Almost all were total failures — they couldn't have been put
on in the village hall for the author's friends. It wasn't a matter of
lack of talent, but of miseducation. The authors of the pseudo-plays
assumed that writing should be based on other writing, not on life.
My play had been influenced by Beckett, but at least the content had
been mine.

Sometimes I'd read a play I liked, but that no one else would think
worth directing. Devine said that if I was really convinced they were
good I should direct them myself on a Sunday night. I directed
Edward Bond's first play in this way, but the very first play I directed
was Kon Fraser's Eleven Plus (which I still have a fondness for,
although it hasn't prospered much). I was given advice by Ann
Jellicoe— already an accomplished director— and I was successful. It
really seemed that even if I couldn't write any more — and writing had
become extremely laborious and unpleasant for me — at least I could
earn a living as a director. Obviously, I felt I ought to study my craft,
but the more I understood how things ought to be done, the more
boring my productions were. Then as now, when I'm inspired, every-
thing is fine, but when I try to get things right it's a disaster. In a way
I was successful — I ended up as an Associate Director of the theatre
— but once again my talent had left me.

When I considered the difference between myself, and other people,
I thought of myself as a late developer. Most people lose their talent
at puberty. I lost mine in my early twenties. I began to think of
children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children.
But when I said this to educationalists, they became angry.

Writers' Group

George Devine had announced that the Royal Court
was to be a 'writers' theatre', but the writers weren't having much say
m the policies of the theatre. George thought a discussion group would
correct this, and he chaired three meetings, which were so tedious
that he handed the job over to William Gaskill, one of his young
directors. Bill had directed my play Brixham Regatta, and he asked me
how I would run the group. I said that if it continued as a talking-shop,
then everyone would abandon it, and that we should agree to discuss

26 NOTES ON MYSELF

nothing that could be acted out. Bill agreed, and the group immediately
began to function as an improvisation group. We learned that things
invented on the spur of the moment could be as good or better than
the texts we laboured over. We developed very practical attitudes to
the theatre. As Edward Bond said, 'The writers' group taught me that
drama was about relationships, not about characters.' I've since found
that my no-discussion idea wasn't original. Carl Weber, writing about
Brecht, says: '. . . the actors would suggest a way of doing something,
and if they started to explain, Brecht would say he wanted no dis-
cussion in rehearsal— it would have to be tried ' (A pity all

Brechtians don't have the master's attitude.)

My bias against discussion is something I've learned to see as very
English. I've known political theatre groups in Europe which would
readily cancel a rehearsal, but never a discussion. My feeling is that
the best argument may be a testimony to the skill of the presenter,
rather than to the excellence of the solution advocated. Also the bulk
of discussion time is visibly taken up with transactions of status which
have nothing to do with the problem to be solved. My attitude is like
Edison's, who found a solvent for rubber by putting bits of rubber in
every solution he could think of, and beat all those scientists who were
approaching the problem theoretically.

The Royal Court Theatre Studio

Devine had been a student of Michel Saint-Denis,
who was a nephew of the great director Jacques Copeau. Copeau had
been an advocate of studio work, and George also wanted a studio. He
started it with hardly any budget, and as I was on the staff, and full of
theories, he asked me if I would teach there. Actually William Gaskill
was the director, and they agreed that I should teach there. I'd been
advocating setting a studio up so I could hardly refuse; but I was
embarrassed, and worried. I didn't know anything about training
actors, and I was sure that the professionals— many from the Royal
Shakespeare, and some who shortly afterwards went into the National
Theatre Company— would know far more than I did. I decided to
give classes in 'Narrative Skills' (see page 109), hoping I'd be one jump
ahead in this area. Because of my dislike of discussion I insisted that
everything should be acted out— as at the Writers' Group— and the
work became very funny. It was also very different, because I was
consciously reacting against Stanislavsky. I thought, wrongly, that
Stanislavsky's methods implied a naturalistic theatre— which it
doesn't, as you can see from the qualifications he introduces as to what

NOTES ON MYSELF 27
sorts of objectives are permissible, and so on. I thought his insistence
on the 'given circumstances' was seriously limiting, and I didn't like
the 'who, what, where' approach which my actors urged on me, and
which I suppose was American in origin (it's described, in Viola
Spolin's Improvisation for the Theatre, Northwestern University Press,
1963; fortunately I didn't know about this book until 1966, when a
member of an audience lent it to me). Lacking solutions, I had to find
my own. What I did was to concentrate on relationships between
strangers, and on ways of combining the imagination of two people
which would be additive, rather than subtractive. I developed status
transactions, and word-at-a-rime games, and almost all of the work
described in this book. I hope this still seems fresh to some people,
but actually it dates back to the early sixties and late fifties.

My classes were hysterically funny, but I remembered Stirling's
contempt for artists who form 'self-admiration groups' and wondered
if we were deluding ourselves. Could the work really be so funny?
Wasn't it just that we all knew each other? Even considering the fact
that I had some very talented and experienced actors, weren't we just
entertaining each other? Was it right that every class should be like a
party?

I decided we'd have to perform in front of real audiences, and see if
we were funny. I took about sixteen actors along to my contemporary
theatre class at Morley College, and said we'd like to demonstrate
some of the exercises we were developing. I'd thought that I'd be the
nervous one, but the actors huddled in the corner and looked terrified.
Once I started giving the exercises, they relaxed; and to our amaze-
ment we found that when the work was good, the audience laughed
far more than we would have done ! It wasn't so easy to do work of a
high standard in public, but we were delighted at the enthusiasm of
the spectators. I wrote to six London colleges and offered them free
demonstration classes, and afterwards we received many invitations
to perform elsewhere. I cut the number of performers down to four or
five and, with strong support from the Ministry of Education, we
started touring around schools and colleges. There, we often found
ourselves on a stage, and we automatically drifted into giving shows
rather than demonstrations. We called ourselves 'The Theatre
Machine', and the British Council sent us around Europe. Soon we
were a very influential group, and the only pure improvisation group
I knew, in that we prepared nothing, and everything was like a
jazzed-up drama class.
It's weird to wake up knowing you'll be onstage in twelve hours,

28 NOTES ON MYSELF

and that there's absolutely nothing you can do to ensure success. All
day you can feel some part of your mind gathering power, and with
luck there'll be no interruption to the flow, actors and audience will
completely understand each other, and the high feeling lasts for days.
At other times you feel a coldness in everyone's eyes, and deserts of
time seem to lie ahead of you. The actors don't seem to be able to see
or hear properly any more— they feel so wretched that scene after
scene is about vomiting. Even if the audience are pleased by the
novelty, you feel you're swindling them. After a while a pattern is
established in which each performance gets better and better until
the audience is like a great beast rolling over to let you tickle it. Then
hubris gets you, you lose your humility, you expect to be loved, and
you turn into Sisyphus. All comedians know these feelings.

As I came to understand the techniques that release creativity in the
improviser, so I began to apply them to my own work. What really
got me started again was an advert for a play of mine in the paper, a
play called The Martian. I had never written such a play, so I phoned
up Bryan King, who directed the theatre. 'We've been trying to find
you,' he said. 'We need a play for next week, does the title The
Martian suit you?' I wrote the play, and it was well received. Since
then I've deliberately put myself in this position. I get myself engaged
by a company and write the plays as I'm rehearsing the actors. For
example, in eight weeks I did two street theatre plays lasting twenty
minutes, plus a three-hour improvised play called Der Fisch, plus a
children's play lasting an hour— this was for Salvatore Poddine's
Tubingen theatre. I don't see that the plays created in this way are
inferior to those I struggle over, sometimes for years.

I didn't learn how to direct again until I left the Royal Court
Theatre and was invited to Victoria (on Vancouver Island). I directed
the Wakefield Mystery Cycle there, and I was so far away from any-
one whose criticism I cared about that I felt free to do exactly what I
felt like. Suddenly I was spontaneous again; and since then, I've
always directed plays as if I was totally ignorant about directing; I
simply approach each problem on a basis of common sense and try to
find the most obvious solutions possible.

Nowadays everything is very easy to me (except writing didactic
things like this book). If we need a cartoon for the programme, I'll
draw one. If we need a play I'll write it. I cut knots instead of labor-
iously trying to untie them— that's how people see me; but they have
no idea of the turgid state I used to be in, or the morass from which
I'm still freeing myself.

NOTES ON MYSELF 29

Getting the Right Relationship

If you want to apply the methods I'm describing in
this book, you may have to teach the way that I teach. When I give
workshops, I see people frantically scribbling down the exercises, but
not noticing what it is I actually do as a teacher. My feeling is that a
good teacher can get results using any method, and that a bad teacher
can wreck any method.

There seems no doubt that a group can make or break its members,
and that it's more powerful than the individuals in it. A great group
can propel its members forward so that they achieve amazing things,
Many teachers don't seem to think that manipulating a group is their
responsibility at all. If they're working with a destructive, bored
group, they just blame the students for being 'dull', or uninterested.
It's essential for the teacher to blame himself if the group aren't in
a good state.

Normal schooling is intensely competitive, and the students are
supposed to try and outdo each other. If I explain to a group that
they're to work for the other members, that each individual is to be
interested in the progress of the other members, they're amazed, yet
obviously if a group supports its own members strongly, it'll be a
better group to work in.

The first thing I do when I meet a group of new students is (prob-
ably) to sit on the floor. I play low status, and I'll explain that if the
students fail they're to blame me. Then they laugh, and relax, and I
explain that really it's obvious that they should blame me, since I'm
supposed to be the expert; and if I give them the wrong material,
they'll fail; and if I give them the right material, then they'll succeed.
I play low status physically but my actual status is going up, since only
a very confident and experienced person would put the blame for
failure on himself. At this point they almost certainly start sliding off
their chairs, because they don't want to be higher than me. I have
already changed the group profoundly, because failure is suddenly not
so frightening any more. They'll want to test me, of course; but I
really will apologise to them when they fail, and ask them to be patient
with me, and explain that I'm not perfect. My methods are very effect-
ive, and other things being equal, most students will succeed, but they
won't be trying to win any more. The normal teacher-student
relationship is dissolved.

When I was teaching young children, I trained myself to share my
eye contacts out among the group. I find this crucial in establishing a

30 NOTES ON MYSELF

'fair' relationship with them. I've seen many teachers who concentrate
their eye contacts on only a few students, and this does affect the
feeling in a group. Certain students are disciples, but others feel
separated, or experience themselves as less interesting, or as 'failures'.

I've also trained myself to make positive comments, and to be as
direct as possible. I say 'Good' instead of 'That's enough'. I've actually
heard teachers say 'Well, let's see who fails at this one', when intro-
ducing an exercise. Some teachers get reassurance when their students
fail. We must have all encountered the teacher who gives a self-
satisfied smile when a student makes a mistake. Such an attitude is not
conducive to a good, warm feeling in the group.

When (in 1964) I read of Wolpe's work in curing phobias, I saw
a clear relationship with the ideas I'd got from Stirling, and with the
way I was developing them. Wolpe relaxed his phobic patients and
then presented them with a very dilute form of the thing that scared
them. Someone terrified of birds might be asked to imagine a bird,
but one in Australia. At the same time that the image was presented,
the patient was relaxed, and the relaxation was maintained (if it wasn't
maintained, if the patient started to tremble, or sweat or whatever,
then something even less alarming would be presented). Relaxation is
incompatible with anxiety; and by maintaining the relaxed state, and
presenting images that gradually neared the centre of the phobia, the
state of alarm was soon dissipated— in most cases. Wolpe taught his
patients to relax, but soon other psychologists were using pentathol
to assist the relaxation. However, there has to be an intention to relax
(muscle-relaxant drugs can be used as a torture !).

If we were all terrified of open spaces, then we would hardly
recognise this as a phobia to be cured; but it could be cured. My
view is that we have a universal phobia of being looked at on a stage,
and that this responds very well to 'progressive desensitisation' of the
type that Wolpe advocates. Many teachers seem to me to be trying
to get their students to conceal fear, which always leaves some traces—
a heaviness, an extra tension, a lack of spontaneity. I try to dissipate
the fear by a method analogous to Wolpe's, but which I really got
from Anthony Stirling. The one finding of Wolpe which I immediately
incorporated into my work was the discovery that if the healing pro-
cess is interrupted by a recurrence of the total fear— maybe a patient
being treated for a phobia of birds suddenly finds himself surrounded
by fluttering pigeons— then the treatment has to be started again at
the bottom of the hierarchy. I therefore constantly return to the very
first stages of the work to try to pull in those students who remain in

NOTES ON MYSELF 31
a terrified state, and who therefore make hardly any progress. Instead
of seeing people as untalented, we can see them as phobic, and this
completely changes the teacher's relationship with them.

Students will arrive with many techniques for avoiding the pain of
failure. John Holt's How Children Fail (Penguin, 1969; Pitman, 1970)
gives examples of children learning to get round problems, rather than
learning to find solutions to problems. If you screw your face up and bite
on your pencil to show you're 'trying', the teacher may write out the
answer for you. (In my school, if you sat relaxed and thought, you were
likely to get swiped on the back of the head.) I explain to the students
the devices they're using to avoid tackling the problems — however easy
the problems are — and the release of tension is often amazing. Univer-
sity students may roll about in hysterical laughter. I take it that the
relief comes from understanding that other people use the same
manoeuvres as they do.

For example, many students will begin an improvisation, or a
scene, in a rather feeble way. It's as if they're ill, and lacking in vitality.
They've learned to play for sympathy. However easy the problem,
they'll use the same old trick of looking inadequate. This ploy is
supposed to make the onlookers have sympathy with them if they
'fail' and it's expected to bring greater rewards if they 'win'. Actually
this down-in-the-mouth attitude almost guarantees failure, and makes
everyone fed up with them. No one has sympathy with an adult who
takes such an attitude, but when they were children it probably
worked. As adults they're still doing it. Once they've laughed at them-
selves and understood how unproductive such an attitude is, students
who look 'ill' suddenly look 'healthy'. The attitude of the group may
instantly change.

Another common ploy is to anticipate the problem, and to try and
prepare solutions in advance. (Almost all students do this — probably
it started when they were learning to read. You anticipate which para-
graph will be yours, and start trying to decipher it. This has two great
disadvantages : it stops you learning from the attempts of your class-
mates ; and very likely you'll have calculated wrongly, and will be asked
to read one of the adjacent paragraphs throwing you into total panic.)

Most students haven't realised— till I show them— how inefficient
such techniques are. The idea that a teacher should be interested in
such things is, unfortunately, novel to them. I also explain strategies
"ke sitting on the end of the row, and how it isolates you from the
group, and body positions that prevent absorption (like the 'lit-crit'
Postures which keep the user 'detached' and 'objective').

32 NOTES ON MYSELF

In exchange for accepting the blame for failure, I ask the students
to set themselves up in such a way that they'll learn as quickly as
possible. I'm teaching spontaneity, and therefore I tell them that they
mustn't try to control the future, or to 'win'; and that they're to have
an empty head and just watch. When it's their turn to take part they're
to come out and just do what they're asked to, and see what happens.
It's this decision not to try and control the future which allows the
students to be spontaneous.

If I'm playing with my three-year-old son and I smack him, he
looks at me for signals that will turn the sensation into either warmth
or pain. A very gentle smack that he perceives as 'serious' will have
him howling in agony. A hard 'play' slap may make him laugh. When
I want to work and he wants me to continue playing he will give very
strong 'I am playing' signals in an attempt to pull me back into his
game. All people relate to each other in this way but most teachers
are afraid to give 'I am playing' signals to their students. If they would,
their work would become a constant pleasure.

Note

i. If you have trouble understanding this section, it may be because
you're a conceptualiser, rather than a visualiser. William Grey Walter, in
The Living Brain (Penguin, 1963) calculated that one in six of us are
conceptualisers (actually in my view there is a far smaller proportion of
conceptualisers among drama students).

I have a simple way of telling if people are visualisers. I ask them to
describe the furniture in a room they're familiar with. Visualisers move
their eyes as if 'seeing' each object as they name it. Conceptualisers look
in one direction as if reading off a list.

Galton investigated mental imagery at the beginning of the century,
and found that the more educated the person, the more likely he was to
say that mental imagery was unimportant, or even that it didn't exist.

An exercise: fix your eyes on some object, and attend to something at
the periphery of your vision. You can see what you're attending to, but
actually your mind is assembling the object from relatively little infor-
mation. Now look directly, and observe the difference. This is one way of
tricking the mind out of its habitual dulling of the world.

Status

1 The See-saw

When I began teaching at the Royal Court Theatre
Studio (1963), I noticed that the actors couldn't reproduce 'ordinary'
conversation. They said 'Talky scenes are dull', but the conversations
they acted out were nothing like those I overheard in life. For some
weeks I experimented with scenes in which two 'strangers' met and
interacted, and I tried saying 'No jokes', and 'Don't try to be clever',
but the work remained unconvincing. They had no way to mark time
and allow situations to develop, they were forever striving to latch on
to 'interesting' ideas. If casual conversations really were motiveless,
and operated by chance, why was it impossible to reproduce them
at the studio?

I was preoccupied with this problem when I saw the Moscow Art's
production of The Cherry Orchard. Everyone on stage seemed to have
chosen the strongest possible motives for each action—no doubt the
production had been 'unproved' in the decades since Stanislavsky
directed it. The effect was 'theatrical' but not like life as I knew it. I
asked myself for the first time what were the weakest possible motives,
the motives that the characters I was watching might really have had.
When I returned to the studio I set the first of my status exercises.

'Try to get your status just a little above or below your partner's,' I
said, and I insisted that the gap should be minimal. The actors seemed
to know exactly what I meant and the work was transformed. The
scenes became 'authentic', and actors seemed marvellously observant.
Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies
a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really 'motiveless'. It
was hysterically funny, but at the same time very alarming. All our
secret manoeuvrings were exposed. If someone asked a question we
didn't bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked.
No one could make an 'innocuous' remark without everyone instantly
grasping what lay behind it. Normally we are 'forbiddea' to see status
fransactions except when there's a conflict. In reality status trans-
actions continue all the time. In the park we'll notice the ducks
squabbling, but not how carefully they keep their distances when
they are not.

34 STATUS

Here's a conversation quoted by W. R. Bion {Experience in Groups,
Tavistock Publications, 1968) which he gives as an example of a group
not getting anywhere while apparently being friendly. The remarks on
the status interactions are mine.

MRS x: I had a nasty turn last week. I was standing in a

queue waiting for my turn to go into the cinema when
I felt ever so queer. Really, I thought I should faint
or something.

[Mrs X is attempting to raise her status by having an interesting medical
problem. Mrs Y immediately outdoes her.]

MRS y: You're lucky to have been going to a cinema. If I

thought I could go to a cinema I should think I had
nothing to complain of at all.
[Mrs Z now blocks Mrs Y.]

MRS z: I know what Mrs X means. I feel just like that

myself, only I should have had to leave the queue.
[Mrs Z is very talented in that she supports Mrs X against Mrs Y while
at the same time claiming to be more worthy of interest, her condition
more severe. Mr A now intervenes to lower them all by making their
condition seem very ordinary.]

mr a: Have you tried stooping down? That makes the
blood come back to your head. I expect you were
feeling faint.
[Mrs X defends herself]

MRS x: It's not really faint.

mrs y: I always find it does a lot of good to try exercises. I
don't know if that's what Mr A means.
[She seems to be joining forces with Mr A, but implies that he was unable
to say what he meant. She doesn't say •Is that what you mean?' but pro-
tects herself by her typically high-status circumlocution. Mrs Z now
lowers everybody, and immediately lowers herself to avoid counter-
attack.] ,
MRS z: I think you have to use your will-power. That s
what worries me — I haven't got any.
[Mr B then intervenes, I suspect in a low-status way, or rather trying
to be high-status but failing. It's impossible to be sure from just the
words.]

MR B: I had something similar happen to me last weeK,
only I wasn't standing in a queue. I was just sitting
at home quietly when . . .
[Mr C demolishes him.]

STATUS 35

MR c: You were lucky to be sitting at home quietly. If I
was able to do that I shouldn't think I had anything
to grumble about. If you can't sit at home why don't
you go to the cinema or something?
Bion says that the prevailing atmosphere was of good temper and
helpfulness. He adds that 'A suspicion grows in my mind, that there is
no hope whatever of expecting co-operation from this group.' Fair
enough. What he has is a group where everyone attacks the status of
everyone else while pretending to be friendly. If he taught them to
play status transactions as games then the feeling within the group
would improve. A lot of laughter would have been released, and the
group might have flipped over from acting as a competitive group into
acting as a co-operative one. It's worth noting how much talent is
locked away inside these apparently banal people.

We've all observed different kinds of teachers, so if I describe three
types of status players commonly found in the teaching profession
you may find that you already know exactly what I mean.

I remember one teacher, whom we liked but who couldn't keep
discipline. The Headmaster made it obvious that he wanted to fire
him, and we decided we'd better behave. Next lesson we sat in a
spooky silence for about five minutes, and then one by one we began to
fool about — boys jumping from table to table, acetylene-gas exploding
in the sink, and so on. Finally, our teacher was given an excellent
reference just to get rid of him, and he landed a headmastership at the
other end of the county. We were left with the paradox that our
behaviour had nothing to do with our conscious intention.
Another teacher, who was generally disliked, never punished and
exerted a ruthless discipline. In the street he walked with fixity of
osc, striding along and stabbing people with his eyes. Without
punishing, or making threats, he filled us with terror. We discussed
with awe how terrible fife must be for his own children.

A third teacher, who was much loved, never punished but kept
excellent discipline, while remaining very human. He would joke with
u s, and then impose a mysterious stillness. In the street he looked
u Pnght, but relaxed, and he smiled easily.

I thought about these teachers a lot, but I couldn't understand the
°rces operating on us. I would now say that the incompetent teacher
Was a low-status player: he twitched, he made many unnecessary
movements, he went red at the slightest annoyance, and he always
like an intruder in the classroom. The one who filled us with
w as a compulsive high-status player. The third was a status

36 STATUS

expert, raising and lowering his status with great skill. The pleasure
attached to misbehaving comes partly from the status changes you
make in your teacher. All those jokes on teacher are to make him
drop in status. The third teacher could cope easily with any situation
by changing his status first.

Status is a confusing term unless it's understood as something one
does. You may be low in social status, but play high, and vice versa.
For example :

tramp: 'Ere! Where are you going?
duchess : I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch . . .
tramp : Are you deaf as well as blind?

Audiences enjoy a contrast between the status played and the social
status. We always like it when a tramp is mistaken for the boss, or the
boss for a tramp. Hence plays like The Inspector General. Chaplin
liked to play the person at the bottom of the hierarchy and then lower
everyone.

I should really talk about dominance and submission, but I'd create
a resistance. Students who will agree readily to raising or lowering
their status may object if asked to 'dominate' or 'submit'.

Status seems to me to be a useful term, providing the difference
between the status you are and the status you play is understood.

As soon as I introduced the status work at the Studio, we found that
people will play one status while convinced that they are playing the
opposite. This obviously makes for very bad social 'meshing' — as in
Bion's therapy group — and many of us had to revise our whole idea of
ourselves. In my own case I was astounded to find that when I thought
I was being friendly, I was actually being hostile ! If someone had said
T like your play', I would have said 'Oh, it's not up to much', perceiv-
ing myself as 'charmingly modest'. In reality I would have been
implying that my admirer had bad taste. I experience the opposite
situation when people come up, looking friendly and supportive, and
say, 'We did enjoy the end of Act One', leaving me to wonder what
was wrong with the rest.

I ask a student to lower his status during a scene, and he enters and
says:

A: What are you reading?

B: War and Peace.

A: Ah! That's my favourite book!
The class laugh and A stops in amazement. I had told him to lower his
status during the scene, and he doesn't see what's gone wrong.
I ask him to try it again and suggest a different line of dialogue.

STATUS 37

A : What are you reading?

B : War and Peace.

A : I've always wanted to read that.
A now experiences the difference, and realises that he was originally
claiming 'cultural superiority' by implying that he had read this
immense work many times. If he'd understood this he could have
corrected the error.

A: Ah! That's my favourite book.

B: Really?

A : Oh yes. Of course I only look at the pictures . . .
A further early discovery was that there was no way to be neutral.
The 'Good morning' that might be experienced as lowering by the
Manager, might be experienced as raising by the bank clerk. The
messages are modified by the receivers.

You can see people trying to be neutral in group photographs. They
pose with arms folded or close to their sides as if to say 'Look! I'm
not claiming any more space than I'm entiticd to', and they hold
themselves very straight as if saying 'But I'm not submissive either!'
If someone points a camera at you you're in danger of having your
status exposed, so you either clown about, or become deliberately
unexpressive. In formal group photographs it's normal to see people
guarding their status. You get quite different effects when people
don't know they're being photographed.

If status can't even be got rid of, then what happens between friends ?
Many people will maintain that we don't play status transactions with
our friends, and yet every movement, every inflection of the voice
implies a status. My answer is that acquaintances become friends
when they agree to play status games together. If I take an acquaint-
ance an early morning cup of tea I might say 'Did you have a good
night?' or something equally 'neutral', the status being established by
voice and posture and eye contact and so on. If I take a cup of tea to a
friend then I may say 'Get up, you old cow', or 'Your Highness's tea',
pretending to raise or lower status. Once students understand that they
already play status games with their friends, then they realise that
they already know most of the status games I'm trying to teach them.

We soon discovered the 'see-saw' principle: 'I go up and you go
down'. Walk into a dressing-room and say T got the part' and evcry-
a ne will congratulate you, but will feel lowered. Say 'They said I was
old' and people commiserate, but cheer up perceptibly. Kings and
lords used to surround themselves with dwarfs and cripples so
could rise by the contrast. Some modern celebrities do the

38 STATUS

same. The exception to this see-saw principle comes when you
identify with the person being raised or lowered, when you sit on his
end of the see-saw, so to speak. If you claim status because you know
some famous person, then you'll feel raised when they are : similarly,
an ardent royalist won't want to see the Queen fall off her horse. When
we tell people nice things about ourselves this is usually a little like
kicking them. People really want to be told things to our discredit in
such a way that they don't have to feel sympathy. Low-status players
save up little tit-bits involving their own discomfiture with which to
amuse and placate other people.

If I'm trying to lower my end of the see-saw, and my mind blocks,
I can always switch to raising the other end. That is, I can achieve a
similar effect by saying 'I smell beautiful' as 'You stink'. I therefore
teach actors to switch between raising themselves and lowering their
partners in alternate sentences ; and vice versa. Good playwrights also
add variety in this way. For example, look at the opening of Moliere's
A Doctor in Spite of Himself. The remarks on status are mine.
SGANARELLE: [Raises himself] No, I tell you I'll have nothing to

do with it and it's for me to say, I'm the master.
MARTINE: [Lowers Sganarelle, raises herself.] And I'm telling

you that I'll have you do as I want. I didn't marry you

to put up with your nonsensical goings-on.
sganarelle: [Lowers Martine.] Oh! The misery of married life!

How right Aristode was when he said wives were

the very devil!

martine: [Lowers Sganarelle and Aristotle.] Just listen to the
clever fellow— him and his blockhead of an
Aristode!

sganarelle: [Raises himself.] Yes, I'm a clever fellow all right!

Produce me a woodcutter who can argue and hold
forth like me, a man who has served six years with
a famous physician and had his Latin grammar off
by heart since infancy !
martine: [Lowers Sganarelle.] A plague on the idiot!

sganarelle: [Lowers Martine.] A plague on you, you worthless
hussy!

martine: [Lowers her wedding day.] A curse on the day and
hour when I took it into my head to go and say
'I will'!

sganarelle: [Lowers notary.] And a curse on the cuckold of a

notary who made me sign my name to my own ruin.

STATUS 39

;: [Raises herself] A lot of reason you have to complain,
I must say ! You ought to thank Heaven every
minute of your life that you have me for your wife.
Do you think you deserved to marry a woman like
me? [And so on.)

(The Misanthrope and other plays, translated by
John Wood, Penguin, 1959.)
Most comedy works on the see-saw principle. A comedian is
someone paid to lower his own or other people's status. I remember
some of Ken Dodd's patter which went something like this : 'I got up
this morning and had my bath . . . standing up in the sink . . .' (Laugh
from audience.) '. . . and then I lay down to dry off — on the draining-
board . . .' (Laughter.) '. . . and then my father came in and said
"Who skinned this rabbit?".' (Laughter.) While he describes himself
in this pathetic way he leaps about, and expresses manic happiness,
absolving the audience of the need to pity him. We want people
: very low-status, but we don't want to feel sympathy for them —
are always supposed to sing at their work.
: way to understand status transactions is to examine the comic
s, the 'funnies'. Most are based on very simple status transactions,
I it's interesting to observe the postures of the characters, and the
nges in status between the first and last frames.

ather way is to examine jokes, and analyse their status transac-
s. For example :

customer: 'Ere, there's a cockroach in the loo!
barmaid: Well you'll have to wait till he's finished, won't you?
r again :

A: Who's that fat noisy old bag?
B : That's my wife.
B : Oh, I'm sorry . . .

A: You're sorry! How do you think I feel?

2 Comedy and Tragedy

In his essay on laughter Bergson maintained that the
roan-falling-on-a-banana-skin joke was funny because the victim had
suddenly been forced into acting like an automaton. He wrote:
through lack of elasticity, through absent-mindedness, and a kind
°f Physical obstinacy: as a result, in fact, of rigidity or of momentum,
e muscles continued to perform the same movement when the
-"cumstances of the case called for something else. This is the reason

40 STATUS

for the man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.' Later in the same
essay he says: 'What is essentially laughable is what is done auto-
matically.'

In my view the man who falls on the banana skin is funny only if
he loses status, and if we don't have sympathy with him. If my poor
old blind grandfather falls over I'll rush up and help him to his feet.
If he's really hurt I may be appalled. If Nixon had slipped up on the
White House steps many people would have found it hysterical. If
Bergson had been right then we would laugh at a drowning man, and
grand military parades would have the crowds rocking with merri-
ment. A Japanese regiment is said to have masturbated by numbers
in a football stadium as an insult to the population of Nanking, but I
don't suppose it was funny at the time. Chaplin being sucked into the
machine is funny because his style absolves us of the need for sym-
pathy.

Tragedy also works on the see-saw principle: its subject is the
ousting of a high-status animal from the pack. Super-intelligent
wolves might have invented this form of theatre, and the lupine
Oedipus would play high status at all times. Even when he was being
led into the wilderness he wouldn't whine, and he'd keep his tail up.
If he crumbled into low-status posture and voice the audience
wouldn't get the necessary catharsis. The effect wouldn't be tragic, but
pathetic. Even criminals about to be executed were supposed to make a
'good end', i.e. to play high status. When the executioner asked Raleigh
if he wouldn't rather face the light of the dawn he said something like
'What matter how the head lie, if the heart be right", which is still
remembered.

When a very high-status person is wiped out, everyone feels
pleasure as they experience the feeling of moving up a step. This is why
tragedy has always been concerned with kings and princes, and why
we have a special high-status style for playing tragedy. I've seen a mis-
guided Faustus writhing on the floor at the end of the play, which is
bad for the verse, and pretty ineffective. Terrible things can happen
to the high-status animal, he can poke his eyes out with his wife's
brooch, but he must never look as if he could accept a position lower
in the pecking order. He has to be ejected from it.

Tragedy is obviously related to sacrifice. Two things strike me
about reports of sacrifices : one is that the crowd get more and more
tense, and then are relaxed and happy at the moment of death; the
other is that the victim is raised in status before being sacrificed. The
best goat is chosen, and it's groomed, and magnificently decorated. A

STATUS 41

human sacrifice might be pampered for months, and then dressed in
fine clothes, and rehearsed in his role at the centre of the great cere-
mony. Elements of this can be seen in the Christ story (the robe, the
crown of thorns, and even the earing of the 'body'). A sacrifice has to
wed with high status or the magic doesn't work.

3 Teaching Status

Social animals have inbuilt rules which prevent them
each other for food, mates, and so on. Such animals confront
* other, and sometimes fight, until a hierarchy is established, after
which there is no fighting unless an attempt is being made to change
the 'pecking order'. This system is found in animals as diverse as
human beings, chicken, and woodlice. I've known about this ever
since I was given a book about social dominance in kittiwake colonies,
yet I hadn't immediately thought of applying this information to
actor training. This is because normal people are inhibited from seeing
v '„at no action, sound, or movement is innocent of purpose. Many
psychologists have noted how uncannily perceptive some schizo-
-hrenics are. I think that their madness must have opened their eyes
things that 'normal' people are trained to ignore.
In animals the pattern of eye contacts often establishes dominance.
A stare is often interpreted as an aggressive act — hence the dangers of
:~ki=g at gorillas through binoculars. Visitors to zoos feel dominant
when they can outstare the animals. I suggest you try the opposite
with zoo animals : break eye contact and then glance back for a mo-
ment. Polar bears may suddenly see you as 'food'. Owls cheer up
perceptibly.

Some people dispute that the held eye contact between 'strangers'
is dominant. Kenneth Strongman wrote in the March 1970 issue of
Science Journal: 'At the time we thought ourselves justified in con-
cluding that a dominance structure of submission from eye contact
exists and that this tends to approach hierarchy, particularly when the
focus is on initial eye contact. Our reason for considering it to be con-
cerned with dominance was based on a statement made by Argyle
and Dean, who suggested that if A wants to dominate B he stares at
him appropriately; B can accept this with a submissive expression or
by looking away, or can challenge and outstare. However, S. E.
Poppleton, a research student at Exeter, has since shown that the
relationship between eye-glance submission hierarchies and an inde-
dent measure of dominance (provided by Catell's 16PF personality

42 STATUS

inventory) is an inverse one. Thus he who looks away first is the more
dominant.'

One might contrast this with other reports, like that of an experi-
ment at Stanford University where it was found that drivers who had
been stared at left traffic lights appreciably faster. Such disagreements
indicate the difficulty of actually perceiving status transactions. In my
view, breaking eye contact can be high status so long as you don't
immediately glance back for a fraction of a second. If you ignore
someone your status rises, if you feel impelled to look back then it
falls. It's as if the proper state of human beings is high, but that we
modify ourselves to avoid conflicts. Posture experts (like Mathias
Alexander) teach high-status postures as 'correct'. It's only to be
expected that status is established not by staring, but by the reaction
to staring. Thus dark glasses raise status because we can't see the
submission of the eyes.

I minimise 'status resistance' from my students by getting them to
experience various status sensations before I discuss the implications,
or even introduce the term. I might ask them to say something nice to
the person beside them, and then to say something nasty. This
releases a lot of laughter, and they are surprised to find that they
often achieve the wrong effect. (Some people never really say anything
nice, and others never say anything really nasty, but they won't
realise this.)

I ask a group to mill about and say 'hallo' to each other. They feel
very awkward, because the situation isn't real. They don't know what
status they should be playing. I then get some of the group to hold all
eye contacts for a couple of seconds, while the others try to make and
then break eye contacts and then immediately glance back for a moment.
The group suddenly looks more like a 'real' group, in that some people
become dominant, and others submissive. Those who hold eye con-
tacts report that they feel powerful — and actually look powerful. Those
who break eye contact and glance back 'feel' feeble, and look it. The
students like doing this, and are interested, and puzzled by the strength
of the sensations.

I might then begin to insert a tentative 'er' at the beginning of each
of my sentences, and ask the group if they detect any change in me.
They say that I look 'helpless' and 'weak' but they can't, interestingly
enough, say what I'm doing that's different. I don't normally begin
every sentence with 'er', so it should be very obvious. Then I move
the 'er' into the middle of sentences, and they say that they perceive
me as becoming a little stronger. If I make the 'er' longer, and move it

status 43

i to the beginning of sentences, then they say 1 look more import-
ant, more confident. When I explain what I am doing, and let them
experiment, they're amazed at the different feelings the length and
displacement of the 'ers' give them. They are also surprised that it's
difficult to get some people to use a short 'er'. There wouldn't seem
to be any problem in putting an 'er' lasting a fraction of a second at the
beginning of each sentence, but many people unconsciously resist.
They say W, or they elongate the sound. These are people who
cling to their self importance. The short 'er' is an invitation for people
to interrupt you; the long 'er' says 'Don't interrupt me, even though
I haven't thought what to say yet.'

Again I change my behaviour and become authoritative. I ask them
what I've done to create this change in my relation with them, and
whatever they guess to be the reason — 'You're holding eye contact',
'You're sitting straighter' — I stop doing, yet the effect continues.
Finally I explain that I'm keeping my head still whenever I speak, and
that this produces great changes in the way I perceive myself and am
perceived by others. I suggest you try it now with anyone you're with.
Some people find it impossible to speak with a still head, and more
curiously, some students maintain that it's still while they're actually
jerking it about. I let such students practise in front of a mirror, or I
use videotape. Actors needing authority — tragic heroes and so on —
have to learn this still head trick. You can talk and waggle your head
about if you play the gravedigger, but not if you play Hamlet. Officers
are trained not to move the head while issuing commands.
My belief (at this moment) is that people have a preferred status ;
they like to be low, or high, and that they try to manoeuvre
themselves into the preferred positions. A person who plays high
status is saying 'Don't come near me, I bite.' Someone who plays low
is saying 'Don't bite me, I'm not worth the trouble.' In either
case the status played is a defence, and it'll usually work. It's very
likely that you will increasingly be conditioned into playing the status
: you've found an effective defence. You become a status specialist,
good at playing one status, but not very happy or competent at
ig the other. Asked to play the 'wrong' status, you'll feel 'un-
*ded'.

I reassure my students, and encourage them, and let them have
conversations together, trying out different ways of changing their
status. One student might try moving very smoothly (high status)
while his partner moves jerkily (low status). 1 One might keep putting
his hands near his face while he speaks, and the other might try

44 STATUS

keeping his hands away from his face. One might try holding his toes
pointing inwards (low status), while one sits back and spreads himself
(high status).

These are just tricks in order to get the students to experience
status changes. If I speak with a still head, then I'll do many other
high-status things quite automatically. I'll speak in complete sentences,
I'll hold eye contact. I'll move more smoothly, and occupy more
'space'. If I talk with my toes pointing inwards I'm more likely to give
a hesitant little 'er' before each sentence, and I'll smile with my teeth
covering my bottom lip, and I'll sound a little breathless, and so on.
We were amazed to find that apparently unrelated things could so
strongly influence each other; it didn't seem reasonable that the
position of the feet could influence sentence structure and eye con-
tact, but it is so.

Once students have understood the concepts, and have been coaxed
into experiencing the two states, then I get them to play scenes in
which: (i) both lower status; (2) both raise status; (3) one raises while
the other lowers; (4) the status is reversed during the scene.

I insist that they have to get their status just a little above or
below their partner's. This ensures that they really 'see' their partner,
as they have exactly to relate their behaviour to his. The automatic
status skills then 'lock on to' the other actor, and the students are
transformed into observant, and apparently very experienced impro-
vises. Of course, they will have been playing status whenever they
improvised, but it would be usually a personal status, not the status
of a character. They would be relating to the problem of succeeding
in the eyes of the audience. These status exercises reproduce on the
stage exactly the effects of real life, in which moment by moment each
person adjusts his status up or down a fraction.

When actors are reversing status during a scene it's good to make
them grade the transitions as smoothly as possible. I tell them that if
I took a photograph every five seconds, I'd like to be able to arrange
the prints in order just by the status shown. It's easy to reverse status
in one jump. Learning to grade it delicately from moment to moment
increases the control of the actor. The audience will always be held
when a status is being modified.

It isn't necessary for an actor to achieve the status he's trying to
play in order to interest an audience. To see someone trying to be
high, and failing, is just as delightful as watching him succeed.

Here are some notes made by students who had just been intro-
duced to status work.

:

STATUS 45

'The using of different types of "er" found me swinging unavoid-
ably from feeling now inferior, now superior, then inferior again. I
found myself crossing my arms, fidgeting, walking with my hands in
my pockets — all movements unnatural to me. I find myself suddenly
freezing my body in order to check up on my status.'

'Nothing has been done in class that I didn't believe or "know".
But I couldn't have stated it.'

'During that scene with Judith in which she at first touched her
head all the time, and then gradually stopped doing it, I couldn't
define the change in her movements, and yet for some reason my
itude changed towards her. When she touched her head I tried to
more helpful, reassuring, whereas once she stopped, I felt more
istant and businesslike — also a bit more challenged — whereas
sly I'd felt nothing but sympathy.'
'I've often been told that an actor should be aware of his body but

a't understand this until I tried talking with my head still.'
'The most interesting revelation to me was that every time I spoke
someone I could tell if I felt submissive or the opposite. I then
tried to play status games in secret with people I knew. Some people I
thought I knew very well I wouldn't dare try it with. Other relatively
new friends were easy to play status games with.'

'Sense of domination when I hold eye contact. Almost a pride in
being able to look at someone else and have them look away. Looking
away and back— felt persecuted. As if everyone was trying to crush
me underfoot.'

'Status — clothes not important. I was walking to the shower with
:1 over my shoulder when I met a fully dressed student who
ok on a very low-status look and allowed me to pass on my way.'
'Every time I speak to someone I can now tell if I'm submissive or

'I've always thought that the man I should like to marry should be
smarter than me; someone I could look up to and respect. Well, my
boy friend is now smarter than me, and I usually respect his know-
ledge, but often I find his high status a nuisance. Perhaps I should seek
someone I consider I'm on the same level with?'

'I felt the dominant figure in the conversation and proceeded to try
and subjugate myself to her whims. I did this by the "touch the head
and face" method. What happened here is that, while prior to this
move I had done most of the talking and directed the conversation,
after this ... I was hard put to get a word in edgeways.'
'I find that when I slow my movements down I go up in status.'

46 STATUS

'I felt as if all the world had suddenly been revealed to me. I
realise that when I talk to people, my attitude of inner feeling is of
almost talking down to them.'

It's a good idea to introduce a bystander into a status scene with
instructions to 'try not to get involved'. If you are a 'customer' in a
'restaurant', and someone at the same table quarrels with the 'waiter',
then your very subtle status manoeuvrings are a delight to watch.

I increase the confidence of the actors by getting them to play
sequences of status exercises. For example, a breakfast scene in which
a husband plays low and a wife plays high, might be followed by an
office scene in which the husband plays high to a secretary who plays
low, leading on to a supper scene in which both wife and husband
play low — and so on. Once the status becomes automatic, as it is in
life, it's possible to improvise complex scenes with no preparation at
all. The status exercises are really crutches to support the actor so that
instinctual systems can operate. The actor then feels that everything is
easy, and he doesn't experience himself as 'acting' any more than he
does in life, even though the actual status he's playing may be one
very unfamiliar to him.

Without the status work my improvisation group, the Theatre
Machine, could never have toured successfully in Europe; not without
preparing the scenes first. If someone starts a scene by saying 'Ah,
another sinner! What's it to be, the lake of fire or the river of excre-
ment?' then you can't 'think' fast enough to know how to react. You
have to understand that the scene is in Hell, and that the other person
is some sort of devil, and that you're dead all in a split second. If you
know what status you're playing the answers come automatically.

'Well?'

'Excrement', you say, playing high status, without doing anything
you experience as 'thinking' at all, but you speak in a cold voice, and
you look around as if Hell was less impressive than you'd been led to
believe. If you're playing low status you say 'Which ever you think
best, Sir', or whatever. Again with no hesitation, and with eyes full of
terror, or wonder.

All this isn't so far away from Stanislavsky as some people might
suppose, even though in Creating a Role Stanislavsky wrote: 'Play the
external plot in terms of physical actions. For example: enter a room.
But since you cannot enter unless you know where you came from,
where you are going and why, seek out the external facts of the plot to
give you a basis for physical actions.' (From Appendix A.) Some
'method' actors take this to mean that they have to know all the 'given

circums

STATUS 47

tances' before they can improvise. If I ask them to do some-
ling spontaneous they react as if they've been asked to do something
. This is the result of bad teaching. In order to enter a room
you need to know is what status you are playing. The actor who
this is free to improvise in front of an audience with no
circumstances at all! Interestingly enough Stanislavsky himself
would almost certainly agree. In Chapter Eight of Creating a Role he
the director, Tortsov, tell the narrator:
' "Go up on the stage and play for us Khlestakov's entrance in the
second act."

How can I play it since I don't know what I have to do?" said I
surprise and objection in my tone.

You do not know everything but you do know some things. So
y the little that you know. In other words, execute out of the life of
part those small physical objectives which you can do sincerely,
truthfully, and in your own person."

I can't do anything because I don't know anything!"
' "What do you mean?" objected Tortsov. "The play says 'Enter

takov.' Don't you know how to go into a room in an inn?"
' "I do." '

What I think he 'knows' is that he must play a particular status.
One way to teach transitions of status is to get students to leave the
class, and then come in through the real door and act 'entering the
ong room'. It's then quite normal to see students entering with
head down, or walking backwards, or in some other way that will
irevent them from seeing that it is the wrong room. They want time
really enter before they start 'acting'. They will advance a couple
act seeing the audience, and leave in a completely phoney

I remind the students that entering the wrong room is an experience
: all have, and that we always know what to do, since we do 'some-
thing'. I explain that I'm not asking the students to 'act', but just to do
what they do in life. We have a radar which scans every new space for
dangers, an early-warning system programmed-in millions of years
as a protection against sabre-tooth tigers, or bigger amoebas or
ever. It's therefore very unusual to refuse to look into the space
; are entering.

soon as the 'wrong room' exercise becomes 'real' they under-
stand that a change of status is involved. You prepare a status for one
situation, and have to alter it when suddenly confronted by the
^expected one. I then set the students to predetermine the direction

48 STATUS

of the status change, and of course errors are often made. Someone
trying to play low status may have to be told to smile, and if he smiles
with both sets of teeth (an aggressive smile) he may have to be asked
to show the top teeth only. People who want to rise in status may have
to be told to turn their backs to us when they leave. Neither smiling
nor turning your back is essential but it may help the student get the
feeling. In difficult cases it helps to use videotape.

A more complex version of this exercise is really a little play. I
invented it at RADA when I was asked if I could push the students into
more emotional experiences. It's for one character — let's say he's a
teacher, although he could be any profession. He arrives late carrying
the register and a pair of glasses. He says something like 'All right,
quiet there, now then', treating us as the class. As he is about to read
the register he puts the glasses on, and sees not his class, but a meeting
of the school Governors. He apologises, dropping in status frantically,
and struggles to the door, which sticks. He wrestles with it and after
about ten seconds it comes free. The actor feels a very great drop in
status when the door jams. It takes him back to feelings he may not
have experienced since childhood: feelings of impotence, and of the
hostility of objects.

Once outside, the actor either stops the exercise, or if he feels brave,
re-enters, and plays the scene again and again. This exercise can turn
people into crumbling wrecks in a very short time, and for actors who
like to 'pretend' without actually feeling anything, it can be a revela-
tion. One Scandinavian actor who apparently had never really
achieved anything because of his self-consciousness, suddenly 'under-
stood' and became marvellous. It was for him a moment of satori. The
terrifying thing is that there's no limit. For example:

'Why didn't anyone tell me that the room had been changed? I
just made a complete fool of myself in front of the Governors.'
(Puts on glasses. Sees Governors.)

'Augh! I . . . I . . . what can I say. Mr Headmaster . . . please . . .
I ... oh ... do excuse me . . . The door. I'm afraid ... it sticks ... the
damp weather, you ... ah ... so ... so sorry.'
(Grovels out. Re-enters.)

'Oh God, it's nice to find someone in the staff-room. Is there any
tea on? The most embarrassing thing just happened to me . . . I . . .'
(Puts on glasses. Sees Governors.)

'Oh . . . I . . . what must you think of me ... I ... I seem to be
having some sort of breakdown . . . haven't been well lately. So sorry
to interrupt ... The ... the door . . . THE DOOR! Augh! ... I'm

STATUS 49

... outrageous conduct . . . please understand . . . er . . . er . . .*
(Exit. Re-enters.)
'It's nice of you to see me at such short notice. I know that psy-
sts are very busy . . . I . .

(Puts on glasses. Sees Governors.)
'. . . I know it was wrong to commit suicide, God, but . . .'

(Puts on glasses. Sees Governors.)
I wouldn't push anyone into playing this game, and it must be under-
stood by the class that people are allowed to get upset, and are not to
be punished by being considered exhibitionistic or cissy.

I repeat all status exercises in gibberish, just to make it quite clear
that the things said are not as important as the status played. If I ask
two actors to meet, with one playing high, and one playing low, and to
reverse the status while talking an imaginary language, the audience
i amazingly. We don't know what's being said, and neither do the
actors, but the status reversal is enough to enthral us. If you've seen
great comedians working in a language you don't understand you'll
know what I mean.

I get the actors to learn short fragments of text and play every
possible status on them. For example, A is late, and B has been waiting
for him.

A: Hallo.
B: Hallo.

A: Been waiting long?
B: Ages.

The implication is that B lowers A, but any status can be played. If
i play high then A might stroll on with 'all the time in the world'
and say 'Hallo' as if he wasn't late at all. B might hold eye contact and
say 'Hallo' with emphasis. A might look away airily and say 'Been
; long? with a sigh as if B were being 'difficult'. 'Ages,' says B,
staring at him, or walking off as if expecting A to follow. If both are
to play low, then A might arrive running; B might stand up, bend the
head forwards and give a low-status smile. 'Hallo,' says A breathlessly,
showing embarrassment that B has stood. 'Hallo,' replies B, also a
little breathless. 'Been waiting long?' asks A with anxiety. 'Ages,' says
B with a weak laugh as if making a feeble joke.
Here's a dialogue taking place in 'Sir's' office.

sir : Come in. Ah, sit down Smith. I suppose you know
why I sent for you?
smith : No, Sir.

(Sir pushes a newspaper across the desk.)

50 STATUS

smith : I was hoping you wouldn't see that.

sir: You know we can't employ anyone with a criminal
record.

smith: Won't you reconsider?

sir: Good-bye, Smith.
smith : I never wanted your bloody job anyway.
(Mat Smith.)

If Smith plays high, then saying 'Won't you reconsider' gives him an
enormous resistance to work against. When Sir says 'Good-bye,
Smith' low status it produces a gripping scene. For Smith to say 'I
didn't want your bloody job anyway' low status, it may be necessary
for him to burst into tears.

One interesting complication in such a scene is that Smith will
have to play low status to the space, even when playing high status to
Sir, or it'll look like his office. Conversely, Sir must play high status to
the space, even when playing low status to Smith. If he doesn't he'll
look like an intruder. 'Move about,' I say. 'Answer the telephone.
Walk over to the window.'

Status is played to anything, objects as well as people. If you enter
an empty waiting-room you can play high or low status to the furniture.
A king may play low status to a subject, but not to his palace.

An actor is waiting on stage for someone to enter and play a scene
with him. 'What status are you playing?' I ask. He says, 'I haven't
started yet.' 'Play low status to the bench,' I say.

He looks around him as if he was in a park that he suspects may be
private. Then he 'sees' a pigeon, and mimes feeding it, rather un-
convincingly. 'Play low status to the pigeon,' I say, and immediately
his mime improves, and the scene is believable. More 'pigeons' arrive,
and one lands on the bench and starts pecking at the bread he's hold-
ing. Another lands on his arm, and then shits on him. He wipes the
mess off surreptitiously. And so on. He doesn't need another actor to
play status scenes with. He can do it with anything in the environ-
ment.

I give students a very strong feeling of 'status' by making them use
only the way they look and sound to ward off attacks. I call it 'non-
defence', but really it's one of the best of all defences. Imagine two
siblings, one of whom (A) lives in the flat of the other (B). B enters and
asks if any letters have arrived for him. A says that there is one on the
sideboard. B picks it up and sees it's been opened. A is always opening
B's letters which causes conflict between them. The scene will prob-
ably develop something like this :

STATUS 51

B: Why did you open my letter?
A: Is it open?

B: You always open my letters.
A: I don't know who did it.
B: No one else has been here!
B will probably start to push A about, and I'll have to stop the scene
for fear that they might hurt each other.

I start the scene again, but tell A that he is to admit everything,
while playing low status.

B: Did you open my letter?
A: Yes.
B stops the attack. He pauses.
B: Yes?
A: Yes.

B : Well, what did you do it for?

A: I wanted to see what was inside.
B is checked again. He may step backwards. He may even retreat to
the furthest wall and lean against it. I encourage him to be angry, and
to close in on A.

B: How dare you open my letters?

A: You're right to be angry. I'm a shit.

B: I told you never to open my letters.

A : I always do it.

B: You do?

finds it increasingly difficult to press home his attack. If he starts to
shake A, then A must cry and keep nodding his head, and saying
'You're right, you're right.' B can of course override his instincts —
human beings do unfortunately have this ability — but the more he
attacks, the more strongly a mysterious wind seems to be trying to
blow him away. If A makes an error, and rises in status, then B closes
in, but if the low status is maintained then B has to consciously 'force'
his anger.

B: Well, don't open them again.
A: I poke my nose into everything.
I've seen the low-status player leap about with joy and roll over
and over on the floor after playing such a scene. It's exhilarating to be
controlling the movements of the other person as if he were a puppet.
When I explained that the more A accepted B's dominance the more
powerfully B was deflected, B said, 'That's right. I thought, "Mother
put him up to it." '
Non-defence is exploited by the wolf who exposes his neck and

52 STATUS

underbelly to a dominant wolf as a way of ending a losing battle. The
top Wolf wants to bite, but can't. Some Congolese soldiers dragged two
white journalists out of a jeep, shot one and were about to shoot the
other when he burst into tears. They laughed and kicked him back to
the jeep and let him drive away, while they waved and cheered. It was
more satisfying to see the white man cry than to shoot him.

Once non-defence has been mastered together with a low-status
attitude, I teach it as a high-status exercise. The same kind of dialogue
occurs :

B: Did you open my letter?

A: Yes. (Quite calmly, and sipping his coffee as if no

attack was being made on him.)
B: Yes? (Momentarily nonplussed.)
A: I always open your letters. (Dismissively.) (And so

on.)

At first hardly anyone can carry off such a scene. They pretend to
be high status, but you can see that they're actually crumbling. I
explain that they are making concealed low-status movements. An arm
climbs up to the back of the chair as if wanting to flee from the ag-
gressor, or to hold on for support. A foot starts to tap as if it wanted
to go.

The best solution I've found is to weight the situation heavily in
favour of A. For example, I might set the scene in A's house, with B
a guest who arrived late the night before, and now meets his host for
the first time at breakfast. I make B's position worse by setting him the
problem of asking A for his daughter's hand in marriage. Once A's
position is reinforced in this way he should be able to maintain his
high status while making no verbal defence at all.
A: You must be John ...
B: Er . . . yes.

A : Cynthia tells me you want to marry her . . .
B: That's right.

A: Oh, by the way, a letter came for you this morning.

B: It's been opened.

A: I open everyone's letters.

B: But it was addressed to me.

A: It's from your mother. Some of it I thought most

unsuitable. You'll see I crossed some paragraphs

out . . . (And so on.)

status 53

4 Insults

If you can get the students to insult each other play-
fully, then the status work will become easier. Playing scenes with
custard pies might be equally liberating, but I've never had the op-
portunity. Once you can accept being insulted (the insult is the verbal
equivalent of the custard pie), then you experience a great elation.
The most rigid, self-conscious, and defensive people suddenly un-
bend.

It's no good just asking the students to insult each other. It's too
personal. If you've just called someone 'kipper feet' it's disconcerting
to suddenly notice that he's flat-footed. If your ears stick out then it's
upsetting to be called 'cloth ears'. On the other hand it is important
for an actor to accept being insulted. The stage becomes an even more
'dangerous' area if you can't admit your disabilities. The young George
Devine cried once because the audience laughed when the character
he was playing was referred to as thin. I remember a flat-chested
actress being destroyed on stage because an adolescent shouted out
that she was a man. The actor or improviser must accept his disa-
bilities, and allow himself to be insulted, or he'll never really feel safe.

My solution is to remove all responsibility for the choice of insult
from the person doing the insulting. I divide the class into two halves,
and get each group to write out a list of names that would insult
people: fool, slut, pig, arsehole, jerk, meatface, dumbhead, flatfoot,
pigeyes, skinny twat, bugeyes, buckteeth, cowflop, monkeyface,
swine, rathead, shitnose, bullshitter, faggot. Only half the class know
who suggested a particular insult, and each suggestion has already
been stamped with half the class's approval.
I put the lists aside and get the students to play 'shop'.
'Can I help you?'
'Yes, I'd like a pair of shoes.'
'Would these do?'
'I'd like another colour.'

'I'm afraid this is the only colour we have, Sir.'
'Ah. Well, perhaps a hat.'
'I'm afraid that's my hat, Sir.'
And so on — very boringly, with both actors 'blocking' the transaction
in order to make the scene more 'interesting' (which it doesn't).

I explain that I don't want them to make the scene 'interesting',
that they are just to buy and sell something. They start again.

54 STATUS
'Can I help you?'
'Just browsing.'

'No you're not,' I say. 'Buy something.'
'I want a hat.'
'How about this one, Sir?'
'Buy it,' I say.
Til buy it.'

'Two pounds ninety, Sir.'
'Here.'

'I'm afraid I don't have any change, Sir.'
'Yes you do,' I insist.

I have to struggle with the actors before they will agree just to buy
something and sell something. Then I get them to play the scene again,
but adding the insults. I give them a list each, and get them to add an
insult to the end of each sentence. This idea delights everyone, but it's
very boring.

'Can I help you, fool?'
'Yes, bugeyes!'

'Do you want a hat, slut?' (And so on.)

I explain that insulting is of no interest. What we really want to see
is someone being insulted. The interest we have in custard pies is in
seeing them hit people. I tell them to repeat every insult in disbelief
and outrage. As soon as they do this the performers get deeply in-
volved and are often impossible to stop. People who are bound
physically relax into a greater physical freedom. Gestures flow instead
of being suddenly jerked to a stop.

'Can I help you, pig?'

'Pig! Why I . . . Flat-footed pig yourself!'

'Me! Flat-footed pig! You call me a flat-footed pig, you . . you
arsehole!' *

'Arsehole!'

'Buy something!' I shout.

'I want a hat, buckteeth!'

'Buckteeth! Try this for size, jerk!'

'Jerk! Jerk! You call me jerk! I'll take it— Cowflop''

'Cowflop!* (And soon.)

The insults must remain an ornamentation to the scene, they
mustn't become the scene itself. Once this is understood they can be
applied to any situation. If you keep changing the lists then the most
terrible things will have been said to everybody. I then give one actor
a list, and let the other actor make up his own, and I set up scenes with

STATUS 55

people. For example master-servant teams can meet, and
suit in this way. But there must be some purpose they're trying to
re as well as 'being insulted'. In my experience this game is very
sing'. The status lowering is so drastic, and at the same time so
surable, that ordinary status scenes hold fewer terrors.
In the average school the teachers are supposed to inhibit their
pupils, and the kind of healing openness typical of therapy groups
simply isn't possible, but the game is useful even with censored lists, or
even in gibberish. Gibberish imposes an acceptance of the insult, or
no one can understand what's happening. The technique is to repeat
the last sound of any gibberish sentence.
'Gort intok horntow lipnol.'
'Lipnol! Lipnol! Grant hork lop sonto inkutu!'
'Inkutu! Die gorno inkutu! Krankon!'
'Krankon!' (And so on.)

This insult game can be played between two groups who slowly
approach each other, but the teacher must ensure that every insult is
received. Enormous energy is released, with individuals running
forwards to hurl their insults, and then being dragged back by their
friends. The target of the insults should be the opposing group, not
individual members. The game usually ends with actors standing face
to face and screaming at each other, and everyone having a very good
time. If they've got 'high' on the game, you can make them repeat it in
mime.

the word to the audience.

5 Status Specialists

If you wish to teach status interactions, it's necessary
to understand that however willing the student is consciously, there
may be very strong subconscious resistances. Making the student safe,
and getting him to have confidence in you, are essential. You then
have to work together with the student, as if you were both trying to
alter the behaviour of some third person. It's also important that the
student who succeeds at playing a status he feels to be alien should be
instantly rewarded, praised and admired. It's no use just giving the
exercises and expecting them to work. You have to understand where
the resistance is, and devise ways of getting it to crumble. Many
teachers don't recognise that there's a problem because they only
exploit the 'preferred' status. In a bad drama school it's possible to
play your 'preferred' status all the time, since they cast you to type,

56 STATUS

exploiting what you can do, instead of widening your range. In the
professional theatre actors divide up roughly into high-status and low-
status specialists. The actors' directory Spotlight used to have the
high-status specialists at the front (called 'straight'), followed by the
low-status specialists (called 'character actors'), followed by children,
and then dogs. This isn't as bad as it sounds, but it's symptomatic of
the tendency for actors to overspecialise. A proper training for actors
would teach ail types of transaction.

Some problems: there are students who will report no change of
sensation when they alter their eye-contact patterns. If you observe
them closely you'll see that the ones who always play low status in life
won't ever hold eye contact long enough to feel dominant. When high-
status specialists break eye contact and glance back, they'll be holding
the glance back for at least a second, which is too long. You may have to
precisely control the length of time that they look before they experience
the change of sensation. Then they'll say, 'But it feels wrong.' This
feeling of wrongness is the one they have to learn as being correct.

I remember a girl who always played high status in improvisations,
and who had never experienced safety and warmth as a performer.
When I asked her to put a short 'er' in front of each sentence she used
the long 'eeeerrrrr' but denied she was doing it. When I asked her to
move her head as she talked she moved it in an abstract way, as if
watching a fly circling in front of her. I asked her to play low status
with an expert low-status improviser, but she held on to herself tightly
with her arms and crossed her legs as if refusing to let her partner
'invade' her. I asked her to unfold and then to tilt her head and sud-
denly she was transformed — we wouldn't have recognised her. She
became soft and yielding and really seemed to enjoy the feelings that
flooded into her, and she acted with feeling and rapport for the first
time. Now that she's learned to play low status with a low-status
partner she can learn to play it with a high-status partner.

Another student refused to play high status in anything but a
wooden manner. He said that he lived in a working-class area and that
he didn't want to be stuck-up. I explained that I wasn't trying to
remove his present skills, which were very necessary, but only to add
a few new ones. He believed that it was necessary to play low status
within his working-class community, not realising that you can play
high or low in any situation. His problem is that he plays low status
well and he won't experiment with other skills.

I asked him to play a scene in which he was to tell his father he had
VD. I chose the scene in order to stir him up, and involve his real

status 57

feelings. All young men have anxieties in that area. He acted out a scene
with no conviction at all, and tried to think up 'clever things' to say.

'I'll give you the dialogue,' I said. 'Enter. Go to the window. Look
out, then turn and say you've got VD.'

He did this. He looked out of the window and immediately made
trivial movements, and dropped down in status.

I stopped him. I explained that if he turned from the window,
looked at his father and didn't move his head, then he'd experience
exactly the sensations he was trying to avoid. I said that he mustn't
try to suppress the head movements but that he must be aware when he
does them, and then somehow feel so dominant that he no longer
needs to make them. When he repeats the scene it's his father who
breaks eye contact and starts to crumble. From this beginning the
student can learn to play characters of any social class, and make them
high or low.

6 Space

I can't avoid talking about 'space' any longer, since
status is basically territorial. Space is very difficult to talk about, but
easy to demonstrate.

When I was commissioned to write my first play I'd hardly been
inside a theatre, so I watched rehearsals to get the feel of it. I was
struck by the way space flowed around the actors like a fluid. As the
actors moved I could feel imaginary iron filings marking out the force
fields. This feeling of space was strongest when the stage was un-
cluttered, and during the coffee breaks, or when they were discussing
some difficulty. When they weren't acting, the bodies of the actors
continually readjusted. As one changed position so all the others
altered their postures. Something seemed to flow between them.
When they were 'acting' each actor would pretend to relate to the
others, but his movements would stem from himself. They seemed
'encapsulated'. In my view it's only when the actor's movements are
related to the space he's in, and to the other actors, that the audience
feel 'at one' with the play. The very best actors pump space out and
suck it in, or at least that's what it feels like. When the movements are
not spontaneous but 'intellectual' the production may be admired,
but you don't see the whole audience responding in empathy with the
movements of the actors.

Here's Stanislavsky describing a performance by Salvini, an actor
who obviously used space in the way I mean :

58 STATUS

'Salvini approached the platform of the Doges, thought a little
while, concentrated himself and, unnoticed by any of us, took the
enure audience of the great theatre into his hands. It seemed that he
did this with a single gesture-that he stretched his hand without
looking into the public, grasped all of us in his palm, and held us
there as if we were ants or flies. He closed bis fist, and we felt the
breath of death; he opened it, and we felt the warmth of bliss. We were

in his power, and we will remain in it all our lives '

The movement teacher Yat Malmgren told me that as a child he'd
discovered that he didn't end at the surface of his body, but was
actually an oval 'Swiss cheese' shape. To me, this is 'closed-eye' space
and you experience it when you shut your eyes and let your body feel
outwards into the surrounding darkness. Yat also talked about people
who were cut off from sensing areas of themselves. 'He has no arms ' he
would say, or 'She has no legs', and you could see what he meant
When I investigated myself I found many areas that I wasn't ex-
periencing, and my feelings are still defective. What I did find was
another shape besides the 'Swiss cheese' shape: a parabola sweeping
ahead of me like a comet's tail. When I panic, this parabola crushes
in. In stage fright space contracts into a narrow tunnel down which
you can just about walk without bumping into things. In cases of
extreme stage fright the space is like a plastic skin pressing on to you
and making your body rigid and bound. The opposite of this is seen
when a great actor makes a gesture, and it's as if his arm has swept
right over the heads of the people sitting at the back of the audience
Many acting teachers have spoke of 'radiations', and they often
sound like mystics. Here's Jean-Louis Barrault:

'Just as the earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, the living human
being is surrounded by a magnetic aura which makes contact with the
external objects without any concrete contact with the human body.
This aura, or atmosphere, varies in depth according to the vitality of
human beings

'The mime must first of all be aware of this boundless contact with
things. There is no insulating layer of air between the man and the
outside world. Any man who moves about causes ripples in the
ambient world in the same way a fish does when it moves in the water.'
(The Theatre of Jean-Louis Barrault, Barrie and Rockcliff, 196 1 )

This isn't very scientific, but like all magical language it does com-
municate a way an actor can 'feel'. If I stand two students face to face
and about a foot apart they're likely to feel a strong desire to change
their body position. If they don't move they'll begin to feel love or

status 59

hate as their 'space' streams into each other. To prevent these feelings
they'll modify their positions until their space flows out relatively
unhindered, or they'll move back so that the force isn't so powerful.
High-status players (like high-status seagulls) will allow their space
to flow into other people. Low-status players will avoid letting their
space flow into other people. Kneeling, bowing and prostrating one-
self are all ritualised low-status ways of shutting off your space. If we
wish to humiliate and degrade a low-status person we attack him while
refusing to let him switch his space off. A sergeant-major will stand
a recruit to attention and then scream at his face from about an inch
away. Crucifixion exploits this effect, which is why it's such a power-
ful symbol as compared to, say, boiling someone in oil.

Imagine a man sitting neutrally and symmetrically on a bench. If he
crosses his left leg over his right then you'll see his space flowing over
to the right as if his leg was an aerofoil. If he rests his right arm along
the back of the bench you'll see his space flowing out more strongly.
If he turns his head to the right, practically all his space will be flowing
in this same direction. Someone who is sitting neutrally in the 'beam'
will seem lower-status. Every movement of the body modifies its space.
If a man who is sitting neutrally crosses his left wrist over his right the
space flows to his right, and vice versa. It's very obvious that the top
hand gives the direction, but the class are amazed. The difference
seems so trivial, yet they can see it's a quite strong effect.

The body has reflexes that protect it from attack. We have a 'fear-
crouch' position in which the shoulders lift to protect the jugular and
the body curls forward to protect the underbelly. It's more effective
against carnivores than against policemen jabbing at your kidneys, but
it evolved a long time ago. The opposite to this fear crouch is the
'cherub posture', which opens all the planes of the body : the head
turns and tilts to offer the neck, the shoulders turn the other way to
expose the chest, the spine arches slightly backwards and twists so
that the pelvis is in opposition to the shoulders exposing the under-
belly — and so on. This is the position I usually see cherubs carved in,
and the opening of the body planes is a sign of vulnerability and
tenderness, and has a powerful effect on the onlooker. High-status
people often adopt versions of the cherub posture. If they feel under
attack they'll abandon it and straighten, but they won't adopt the
fear crouch. Challenge a low-status player and he'll show some tend-
ency to slide into postures related to the fear crouch.

When the highest-status person feels most secure he will be the
most relaxed person, as for example in the opening scenes of Kozint-

60 STATUS

sev's film of King Lear. A solemn ceremony is arranged, the daughters
take their places, an atmosphere of expectancy is built up, and then
Lear (Juri Jarvet) enters as if he owns the place, warms his hands at
the fire, and 'makes himself at home'. The effect is to enormously
elevate Lear in status. Lears who strain to look powerful and threaten-
ing in this opening scene miss the point, which is that Lear is so
confident, and trustful, that he willingly divides his kingdom and sets
in motion his own destruction.

Status can also be affected by the shape of the space you are in.
The corners of couches are usually high-status, and high-status
'winners' are allowed to take them. If you leave a car in the middle of
a great wilderness there is a moment when you 'move out of the space
of the car'. In the wilderness the effect is very strong, for people
always like to be beside objects. Thrones are usually set against walls
and often have a canopy set high up below the ceiling— possibly a
relic of the need to swing up into trees in emergencies.

Imagine an empty beach. The first family to arrive can sit any-
where, but they'll either take up position against some rocks, or sit a
third of the way in — supposing it's all equally sandy. In my part of
England, where there are many small beaches, the next family to
appear might well move on to the next beach, regarding the first one
as 'claimed'. If they do move in they'll stake out 'their part of the
beach', away from the first group. If they sat close to the first group
then they'd have to make friends, which could be difficult. If they sat
close without making friends, then the first group would react with
alarm. 'Close' is a concept related to the amount of space available.
Once the beach fills up with people you can sit very close to the original
family. The space people demand around them contracts as more
people are added. Finally as the beach reaches saturation people stare
at the sky, or roll in to face their friends, or cover their faces with
newspaper or whatever.

People will travel a long way to visit a 'view'. The essential clement
of a good view is distance, and preferably with nothing human in the
immediate foreground. When we stand on a hill and look across fifty
miles of emptiness at the mountains, we are experiencing the pleasure
of having our space flow out unhindered. As people come in sight of a
view, it's normal for their posture to improve and for them to breathe
better. You can see people remarking on the freshness of the air, and
taking deep breaths, although it's the same air as it was just below
the brow of the hill. Trips to the sea, and our admiration of mountains
are probably symptoms of overcrowding.

STATUS 6l

Approach distances are related to space. If I approach someone on
open moorland I have to raise an arm and shout 'excuse me' as soon
as I'm within shouting distance. In a crowded street I can actually
brush against people without having to interact.

Imagine that two strangers are approaching each other along an
empty street. It's straight, hundreds of yards long and with wide
pavements. Both strangers are walking at an even pace, and at some
point one of them will have to move aside in order to pass. You can
sec this decision being made a hundred yards or more before it
actually 'needs' to be. In my view the two people scan each other for
signs of status, and then the lower one moves aside. If they think
they're equal, both move aside, but the position nearest the wall is
actually the strongest. If each person believes himself to be dominant
a very curious thing happens. They approach until they stop face to
face, and do a sideways dance, while muttering confused apologies. If
a little old half-blind lady wanders into your path this 'mirror' dance
doesn't happen. You move out of her way. It's only when you think the
other person is challenging that the dance occurs, and such incidents
are likely to stick in the mind. I remember doing it in a shop doorway
with a man who took me by my upper arms and moved me gently out
of his path. It still rankles. Old people who don't want to give way, and
who cling to the status they used to have, will walk along the street
hugging the wall, and 'not noticing' anyone who approaches them. If,
as an experiment, you also hug the wall very funny scenes occur when
you stop face to face— but the sideways dance doesn't happen because
you're conscious of what you're doing. Old people in, say, Hamburg,
often collide with young Britishers in the street, because they expect
the young to step aside for them. Similarly, a high-status stripper will
walk stark naked into a stagehand who stands in her way. In the Russian
Hamlet film there's a moment where Hamlet finds his way moment-
arily obstructed by a servant and he smashes him down. When you
watch a bustling crowd from above it's amazing that they don't all
bump into each other. I think it's because we're all giving status sig-
nals, and exchanging subliminal status challenges all the time. The
more submissive person steps aside.

This means that when two improvisers pass on a bare stage it may
be possible to say where they are, even though they may not have
decided on a location. The class will agree that the actors look as if
they're in a hospital corridor, or in a crowded street, or passing on a
narrow pavement. We judge this from the distance at which they
make the first eye contact, and from the moment that they 'switch off'

62 STATUS

iW n 3 ^ 0 ^ bcf ° re paSSiDg - The Ckss not b»w they
^nlT aCt0fS 111 3 partiCular environme nt. but there is often a
general agreement. When actors and directors misjudge social dfcr
aoces or distort them for 'dramatic effect' the audi no Twosome
level, know that the work is not truthful. ' mC

znhLT? T h 1 S ? dem 311 a PP reciation "Social distance is to
get h,m to hand out leaflets in the street. You can't just thrust vour
hand out at people, you have to establish that you're gi ting out leaflets
and h en present one „ ^ ^ « J" leaflets

student acts bored, and says 'Come on, we'll be late', and generallvt

sometimes extremely mteresting scenes take place, but if the studen*
re nervous they will probably m.stime the.nin 1 approach Tht X
looks as ,f they are invisible. You can see them greeting people who
Sr^f £X1St - ThC ad -4 Sg n t
Zlt " f 1 SmiSS ^ Pe ° p,e ' S react,ons as 'untruthful'.
Another way of opemng people's eyes to the way the body positions

v ol t°rr Ce ° r k SUbmission ^ controlling s'pace i to'ask two

SSSSfJS t r Z f CI students study to MaQ y stude «s ^

wkh th^r T ' ? f y ° U ^ ^ <Statues '> lift 'hem, together
with then- chairs, and place them on the opposite sides of each other
the change ,s dramat.c. Their 'space' which seemed so 'natural' looks'
wend, and everyone can see how carefully they had adjusted
movements to fit in with each other. ' ^

I ask students (for homework!) to watch grouns of n, n .i, i

soton T t0 D ° dCe h ° W ^Tchlg« P wh I

someone leam or JOms a group. If you watch two , e JJ? g and

7 Master-Servant

audiences is J^^S^^ ^ immeDSe pIeasurc t0
ie master-servant scene. A dramatist who adapts a story

STATUS 63

for the stage will often add a servant, especially if it's a comedy;
Sophocles gave Silenus as a slave to the Cyclops, Moliere gave Don
Juan a servant, and so on. The master-servant scene seems to be funny
and entertaining in all cultures — even people who have never seen a
manservant have no difficulty in appreciating the nuances.

The relationship is not necessarily one in which the servant plays
low and the master plays high. Literature is full of scenes in which the
servant refuses to obey the master, or even beats him and chases him
out of the house. The whole point of the master-servant scene is that
both partners should keep see-sawing. Dramatists go to ludicrous
lengths to devise situations in which the servant actually has to pretend
to be the master, and the master to pretend to be the servant !

If I ask two students to play a master-servant scene they will almost
always look like a parent helping a child, or one friend helping another
friend, or at best, as if some incompetent person is standing in for the
real servant who's off sick. Once they've been trained the servant can
throttle the master while remaining visibly the servant. This is very
pleasing to the audience, even though they may have no idea of the
forces operating.

I teach that a master-servant scene is one in which both parties
act as if all the space belonged to the master. (Johnstone's law!)
An extreme example would be the eighteenth-century scientist Henry
Cavendish, who is reported to have fired any servant he caught sight
of! (Imagine the hysterical situations: servants scuttling like rabbits,
hiding in grandfather clocks and ticking, getting stuck in huge vases.)
People who are not literally masters and servants may act out the roles,
henpecked husbands and dominant wives for example. The contrasts
between the status played between the characters and the status played
to the space fascinates the audience.

When the masters are not present, then the servants can take full
possession of the space, sprawl on the furniture, drink the brandy, and
so on. You may have noticed how 'shifty' chauffeurs look when their
masters are away. They can smoke, chat together and treat the cars as
their 'own', but being in the street they feel 'exposed'. They have to
keep a 'weather eye out'. When the master is present, the servant must
take care at all times not to dominate the space. One might imagine
that since the servants have work to do, everything possible should be
done to see that they're kept 'fresh' and at ease, but a servant is not a
worker in this sense. You can work for someone without being 'their
servant'. A servant's primary function is to elevate the status of the
master. Footmen can't lean against the wall, because it's the master's

64 STATUS

wall. Servants must make no unnecessary noise or movement, because
it's the master's air they're intruding on.

The preferred position for a servant is usually at the edge of the
master's 'parabola of space'. This is so that at any moment the master
can confront him and dominate him. The exact distance the servant
stands from the master depends on his duties, his position in the
hierarchy, and the size of the room.

When the servant's duties take him into close proximity with the
master he must show that he invades the master's space 'unwillingly'."
If you have to confront the master in order to adjust his tie you stand
back as far as possible, and you may incline your head. If you're
helping with his trousers you probably do it from the side. Crossing in
front of the master the servant may 'shrink' a little, and he'll try to
keep a distance. Working behind the master, brushing his coat, he
can be as close as he likes, and visibly higher, but he mustn't stay out
of sight of the master unless his duties require it (or unless he is very
low status).

The servant has to be quiet, to move neatly, and not to let his arms
or legs intrude into the space around him. Servants' costumes are
usually rather tight so that their bodies take up a minimum of space.
Other things being equal, the servant should be near a door so that he
can be instantly dismissed without having to walk round the master.
You can see servants edging surreptitiously into this position.

It's always interesting for the audience when the master tries to
coax the servant out of his role.

'Ah, Perkins, sit down, will you.'

'In . . . in your chair, Sir?'

'Certainly certainly, what will you have?'

'Er . . . er . . .'

'Whisky? Soda?'

'Anything you wish, Sir.'

'Oh come on, man, you must have some preference. Don't sit on the
edge of the chair, Perkins, relax, make yourself comfortable. I'd like
your advice, actually.'

And so on. It's interesting because the audience knows that if the
servant does step out of his role, there'll be trouble.

'How dare you take a cigar, Perkins !'

'But Sir, you told me to make myself at home, Sir !'
If the master and the servant agree to step out of their roles everyone
else will be furious— as when Queen Victoria made friends with John
Brown.

STATUS 65

I get my students to mime dressing and undressing each other as
masters and servants. It's very easy to see when the space is wrong,
and they suddenly 'catch on'. I also play scenes with nice masters and
horrible servants, and nasty masters with flustered servants. You can
improvise quite long plays by putting together a structure of such
scenes (this is how the Commedia dell' Arte scenarios worked). For
example: (1) nice master, nasty servant; (2) nasty master, nice servant;
(3) both teams interrelate and quarrel; (4) Team One prepares for
duel; (5) Team Two prepares for duel; (6) the duel.

On a good night the Theatre Machine could improvise a half-hour
comedy based on this structure. Sometimes the servants have to fight
the actual duel, sometimes the duel is fought on piggyback with the
servants as horses, and so on.

It's very easy to invent master-servant games, but there are some
that are particularly important for public improvisers. One is 'keeping
the servant on the hop'. In this game the master objects to everything
the servant is, or says, or does. The servant accepts the master's
statement, and then deflects it.

'Smith! Why are you wearing that ridiculous uniform?'

'It's your birthday, Sir.*
This is a correct answer. 'I'm not wearing a uniform, Sir' rejects the
master's statement, and is therefore incorrect. 'You told me to, Sir' is
also wrong because it's implying that the challenge shouldn't have
been made.

You can always recognise a correct reply, because the master
'boggles' for a moment, as his mind readjusts.
'Your coffee, Sir.'
'Where's the sugar?'
'It's in, Sir.'

A correct answer, since the servant has accepted that the master takes
sugar, and that there isn't any visible. To say 'What about your diet,
Sir?' or 'You don't take sugar, Sir' would be less correct, and feebler.

Another game involves the servant getting himself into trouble.

'Why are you wearing that uniform, Smith?'

'I burned the other one, Sir.'

Or:

'Where's the sugar?'

'I've eaten the last lump, Sir.'

This game also generates its own content.

'Good morning, Jenkins.'

'I'm afraid it's not morning, Sir. I forgot to wake you.'

66 STATUS

'Augh! Four o'clock in the afternoon. Don't you know what day it
is?'

'Your coronation, Sir.'

There is a lazzi that I use in teaching this game. It's a particular
pattern of master-servant dialogue in which the servant is so guilty that
he 'overconfesses'. I got it from Moliere.

'Ah Perkins ! I have a bone to pick with you !'

'Not the rhubarb patch, Sir.'

'What about the rhubarb patch?'

'I let the goat in by mistake, Sir.'

'You let my goat eat my rhubarb ! You know I have a passion for
rhubarb! What will we do with all the custard we ordered?'
'I'm planting some more, Sir.'

'So I should hope. No! It's much worse than mere rhubarb!'
'Oh, Sir! The dog!'
'My dog!'

'Yes, Sir. I couldn't stand it following me around and sniffing me and
messing everywhere, and, and it wetting me when you made me stand
to attention at parties, and them all laughing. That's why I did it, Sir!'

'Did what?'

'Why, nothing, Sir.'

'Did what? What did you do to poor Towser?'
T . . . I . . .'
'Go on!'

'Poisoned it, Sir.'
'You poisoned my dog!'
'Don't hit me, Sir.'

'Hit you! Hanging would be too good for you. Why it's worse than
the thing I wanted you for in the first place. You'd better make a clean
breast of it.'

'But what have I done?'

'You've been found out, Perkins.'

'Oh no, Sir.'

'Oh yes!'

*Oh, Sir.'

'Scoundrel!'

'She shouldn't have told you, Sir.'
'What?'

'She got me in the bathroom, Sir. She swore she'd scream and tell
you that I'd attacked her, Sir. She tore her clothes off, Sir.'
'What! What!'

STATUS 67

The literary value may not be high, but audiences laugh a lot.

Getting an actor to play both parts in a master-servant scene can
accelerate the skills. When the actor is wearing a hat he's the master,
then he removes it and leaps into the position in which he's been
imagining the servant, and plays the servant role. The moment he
can't think what to say he changes roles. He can throttle himself, and
beat himself up, or praise himself, and he 'blocks' the action far less.
It's actually easier to play master-servant scenes as solos. The mind
has an ability to split itself readily into several people — Frederick
Perls got people to play 'top dog' and 'underdog' in a similar way.

An excellent way to play master-servant scenes is to let one actor
do both voices, the other mouthing the words that are supposed to be
his. This sounds very difficult, but it's actually easier to sustain long
scenes in this way. At first the actor who's mouthing the words will
play a passive role. It's necessary to prod him into developing the
action. If he picks up a chair and threatens the master with it, then
the master will have to say something appropriate, like 'Where's the
money you owe me, Sir?' Perhaps the master will beat the servant up
and do all the screams and pleas for mercy himself.

If you experiment with master-servant scenes you eventually
realise that the servant could have a servant, and the master could have
a master, and that actors could be instandy assembled into pecking
orders by just numbering them. You can then improvise very com-
plicated group scenes on the spur of the moment.

I introduce pecking orders as clown games, oversimplifying the
procedures, and creating complex absurdities which 'cartoon' real life.
Orders and blame are passed one way along the hierarchy, excuses and
problems are passed the other way. So far as possible each person is to
teract with the one next to him in rank. Audiences never seem to tire
dialogue like this:
t: Chair!
2: Chair!
3: Get a chair!
4: Yes, Sir.
1 : What's happening?
2: I'll just check, Sir. Where's the chair?
3: Number Four's getting it, Sir.
4: Beg pardon, but I can't find one, Sir.
3: He can't find one!

2: 'Sir!' How dare you address me without calling me
'Sir'?

68 STATUS

3: Yes, Sir! Number Four reports that there is no chair,
Sir!

1 : What's going on here, Number Two?
2 : There's no chair, Sir.

IS No chair! This is monstrous! Have someone crouch

so that I can sit on them !
2: Number Three, have Number Four crouch so that

Number One can sit on him.
4 : Permission to speak, Sir ! (And so on.)
The patterns become even clearer if you give each actor a long
balloon with which to hit people. If Number One hits Number Two,
Number Two apologises to him, and hits Number Three, and so on.
Number Four, who can't hit anyone ducks, or cries, or bites his lip, or
dies, or whatever. Each person can also try to make faces at anyone
'above' him, without getting caught (if possible). If Number One sees
Number Three make a face at Number Two, he informs Number Two,
and so on. This may look very tedious on the page, but these simple
rules produce amazing permutations.

One of the craziest 'clown games' is a version of 'taking the hat'.
I've seen spectators collapsing with laughter. I start the game by
taking four students and numbering them one to four. Each wears a
soft trilby hat. First, Number One takes Number Two's hat and throws
it at his feet. Number Two reacts with horror and embarrassment and
shrieks for Number Three to pick the hat up and replace it. Number
Two then takes Number Three's hat — and so on, except that Number
Four will have to put his own hat on.

I then tell Number One that although he prefers to take Number
Two's hat, he can in fact take anybody's. Number Two similarly
prefers to take Number Three's, but he can also take Number Four's.

Once this pattern is almost learnt, I let people weave about and try
not to get their hats taken. And I insist that the hats must be thrown
at the feet. People have a strong impulse to throw or kick the hats
right away, which breaks up the group and spoils the crazy patterns.
If you can keep the actors 'high' on the game they will now be using
their bodies like excellent physical comedians, they will have a mar-
vellous 'rapport' with each other, and absolutely no trace of self-
consciousness. I make them play a scene while continuing this insane
activity. I send them outside and get them to enter as if burgling a
house in which people are asleep upstairs. Or I get them to pack for
the holidays, or interact with another pecking order who are also
'taking hats'. Number One will probably have to throw insane fits of

STATUS 69

rage to get anything done, but it's more important that the scene is
played than the hat game 'demonstrated'. You can't even teach this
game unless you yourself are 'high' and expressing great drive and
energy.

Actors should become expert at each stage of a pecking order.
There will be actors who can at first only play one role really well.
Videotape is useful in explaining to them where their behaviour is
inappropriate.

Number One in a pecking order has to make sure that everything is
functioning properly. Anything that irritates him must be suppressed.
At all times everything must be organised for his personal content-
ment. He can also add his own rules, insisting that absolute silence
should be maintained at all times, or that the word 'is' should be
abolished from the language, or whatever. Desmond Morris, in The
Human Zqo (Cape, 1969 ; Corgi, 1971) gives 'ten golden rules' for people
who are Number Ones. He says, 'They apply to all leaders, from
baboons to modern presidents and prime ministers.' They are:

1. You must clearly display the trappings, postures and gestures of
dominance.

2. In moments of active rivalry you must threaten your subordinates
aggressively.

3. In moments of physical challenge you (or your delegates) must
be able forcibly to overpower your subordinates.

4. If a challenge involves brain rather than brawn you must be able
outwit your subordinates.

5. You must suppress squabbles that break out between your
subordinates.

6. You must reward your immediate subordinates by permitting
them to enjoy the benefits of their high ranks.

7. You must protect the weaker members of the group from undue
on.

You must make decisions concerning the social activities of your

9. You must reassure your extreme subordinates from time to time.
10. You must take the initiative in repelling threats or attacks
arising from outside your group.

Number Four has to keep Number Three happy while avoiding the
attention of One or Two. If addressed by One or Two he must avoid
any appearance of wanting to usurp Three's position. If the general
s peaks to a private we should expect the private to keep glancing at the
sergeant. If the general lowers the sergeant the private may be secretly

70 STATUS

delighted but he'll have to hide it, and at the time he might be ex-
pected to find it embarrassing. Number Four has to be an expert at
making excuses, and in evading responsibility. He must also be invent-
ing problems to pass up the pecking order.

Basically, One imposes aims and tries to get them fulfilled, while
Four discovers that the house is on fire, or the enemy approaching, or
that there's only three minutes' oxygen left, and so on. Two and Three
are mostly concerned with maintaining their respective positions, and
with the communication of information up and down the fine.

More naturalistic pecking-order work can be introduced as 'status
towers'. Someone begins with some low-status activity, and each
person who enters the scene plays a step higher. Or you can start at
the top and add each person one step down.

It is the lack of pecking-order that makes most crowd scenes look
unconvincing. The 'extras' mill about trying to look 'real', and the
spaces between them are quite phoney. In films where Mafia bandits
wait on a hillside while their leader confers with someone, you can see
that the director has spaced them out 'artistically', or has just said
'spread yourself out'. By just numbering people in hierarchies so that
they knew what status they were, such errors could be avoided.

8 Maximum Status Gaps

In life, status gaps are often exaggerated to such an
extent that they become comical. Heinrich Harrer met a Tibetan
whose servant stood holding a spitoon in case the master wanted to
spit. Queen Victoria would take her position and sit, and there had to
be a chair. George the Sixth used to wear electrically heated under-
clothes when deerstalking, which meant a gillie had to follow him
around holding the battery.

I train actors to use minimum status gaps, because then they have
to assess the status of their partners accurately, but I also teach them
to play maximum status-gap scenes. For example, I ask the actors
to play a scene in which a master is as high in status as possible, and
the servant as low as possible. At first they'll play ineptly. The master
looks uncomfortable, and the servant intrudes on the master's space.

I start the scene again and say that the moment the master feels the
slightest irritation he's to snap his fingers— the servant will then
commit suicide. I'll have to prod the master into action because he'll
be reluctant to exercise his power. The moment the master looks ir-
ritated I say 'Kill him!' and send in more servants until the stage is

STATUS 71

Uttered with bodies. Everyone laughs a lot, but often the servants
have no idea why they're being killed. I ask the master to explain the
reasons, but I stress that he doesn't need to be fair. The servants
usually think the master is being harsh, but the audience are amazed
that servants survive so long, since everything they do is inept.
Servants are killed because they wave their arms about, because they
clump about, because they're disrespectful, or because they mis-
understand the master's requirements.

Now I give the servants three lives, so they die at the third snap of
the fingers. Amazingly you'll see them doing exactly the same thing
after a finger snap as before it. 'Do something different,' I shout, 'he's
about to kill you again.' The servants seem amazingly unadaptable—
this is because they're demonstrating their role as servants rather than
attending to the needs of the master. At first they survive for just a
few seconds, but soon they're surviving for minutes, and the masters
" cgin to feel amazingly pampered as they're thrust up in status by
their servants.

Once a maximum-gap master-servant scene is established, I send in
a third person who has to placate the master, and cope with the
servants as well.

In one form of this game you reverse the expected status. If an
executioner is trying to play as low as possible, then he'll be too nervous
to roll the last cigarette, he'll apologise for the untidiness, he'll ask for
an autograph, or he'll accidentally shoot himself in the foot. The
suicide on the ledge who plays high status may argue the rescuer into
jumping off. It's very easy to create scenes this way.

'Excuse me, Miss . . .'

'Next cashier please. I'm just going off duty.'

'Er . . . no, no . . . I'm not a customer.'

*If you'll just join the queue over there, Sir . . .'

'I've got a note. Here.'

'Four shirts, two pants, six socks?'

'No, no . . . er . . . here, this one.'

'Hand over the money? This is a stick-up!'

'Not so loud.'

'Well, how much did you want?'
'All of it!'
'Don't be absurd!'

'Yeah, well, just a few quid then, to tide us over.'
'I shall have to refer this to Mr Carbuncle.'
*5op, then!'

72 STATUS

Maximum-status-gap exercises produce 'absurd' improvisations.
(I don't like the term 'theatre of the absurd', because the best 'absurd'
plays present 'equivalents' for reality, and aren't nonsensical, and
many conventional writers have written 'existential' plays. 'Absurd'
plays are based on maximum-status-gap transactions.)

Although this short essay is no more than an intro-
duction, by now it will be clear to you that status transactions aren't
only of interest to the improviser. Once you understand that every
sound and posture implies a status, then you perceive the world
quite differently, and the change is probably permanent. In my view,
really accomplished actors, directors, and playwrights are people with
an intuitive understanding of the status transactions that govern human
relationships. This ability to perceive the underlying motives of
casual behaviour can also be taught.

In conclusion, but as a coda, rather than a summing-up, I'd sug-
gest that a good play is one which ingeniously displays and reverses
the status between the characters. Many writers of great talent have
failed to write successful plays (Blake, Keats, Tennyson, among others)
because of a failure to understand that drama is not primarily a
literary art. Shakespeare is a great writer even in translation; a great
production is great even if you don't speak the language. A great play
is a virtuoso display of status transactions — Waiting for Godot, for
example. The 'tramps' play friendship status, but there's a continual
friction because Vladimir believes himself higher than Estragon, a
thesis which Estragon will not accept. Pozzo and Lucky play maxi-
mum-gap master-servant scenes. The 'tramps' play low status to
Lucky, and Pozzo often plays low status to the tramps— which pro-
duces thrilling effects. Here's a section where the 'tramps' are asking
why Lucky holds the bags instead of resting them on the ground.
pozzo: . . . Let's try and get this clear. Has he got the
right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he
doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And
why doesn't he want to? (Pause.) Gentlemen, the
reason is this.
vladimir: (To Estragon.) Make a note of this.

pozzo: He wants to impress me so that I'll keep him.
estragon: What?

pozzo : ... In reality, he carries like a pig. It's not his job.

status 73
vladimir : You want to get rid of him?

pozzo: He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll

regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As
though I were short of slaves ! (All three look at
Lucky.) Atlas, son of Jupiter!
If you observe the status, then the play is fascinating. If you ignore
it the play is tedious. Pozzo is not really a very high-status master,
since he fights for status all the time. He owns the land, but he doesn't
own the space.

pozzo : . . . I must be getting on. Thank you for your

society. (He reflects.) Unless I smoke another pipe
before I go. What do you say? (They say nothing.)
Oh, I'm only a small smoker, a very small smoker,
I'm not in the habit of smoking two pipes one on
top of the other, it makes (Hand to heart, sighing) my
heart go pit-a-pat. (Silence.) But perhaps you don't
smoke? Yes? No? It's of no importance. (Silence.)
But how am I to sit down now, without affectation,
now that I have risen? Without appearing to — how
shall I say — without appearing to falter. (To
Vladimir.) I beg your pardon? (Silence.) Perhaps
you didn't speak? (Silence.) It's of no importance.
Let me see . . .
(He reflects.)
estragon: Ah! That's better.

(He puts the bones in his pocket.)
vladimir: Let's go.
estragon: So soon?

pozzo : One moment ! (He jerks the rope.) Stool ! (He points
with his whip. Lucky moves the stool.) More! There!
(He sits down. Lucky goes back to his place) Done it !
(He fills his pipe.)
It must be clear, I think, that even the stage directions relate to
status. Every 'silence' is lowering to Pozzo. I remember a reviewer
(Kenneth Tynan) making fun of Beckett's pauses, but this just shows
a lack of understanding. Obviously Beckett's plays need careful pacing,
but the pauses are part of the pattern of dominance and submission.
Godot earns its reputation as a boring play only when directors try to
ke it 'significant', and ignore the status transactions.
I don't myself see that an educated man in this culture necessarily
to understand the second law of thermodynamics, but he certainly

74 STATUS

should understand that we are pecking-order animals and that this
affects the tiniest details of our behaviour.

Note

I. The high-status effect of slow motion means that TV heroes who have
the power of superhuman speed are shown slowed down ! Logic would
suggest that you should speed the film up, but then they'd be jerking
about like the Keystone Cops, or the bionic chicken.

Spontaneity

'I was given the part of poor Armgard, so I stood
in front of the class and as I began with "Here he cannot escape
me, he must hear me", I suddenly noticed a warm friendly feeling
in the region of the stomach, like a soft hotwater bottle in a cold
bed, and when I got to "Mercy, Lord Governor! Oh, pardon,
pardon", I was already on my knees, tears streaming from my eyes
and nose, and sobbing to such an extent that I could only finish the
passage "My wretched orphans cry for bread" with supreme difficulty.
The fishhead was in favour of a more restrained performance and her
cutting voice drove me to the back of the class room with words of
"Un-German hysterical conduct". It was a nightmare. I almost died
of shame and prayed for an earthquake or an air raid to deliver me
from the derision and shock . . . apart from the nagging voice all
went still, the others stared at me as though they had unwittingly
boured a serpent in their midst. The rest of my days with Weise
_e torture. I was afraid of the others and myself for I could never
certain that I wouldn't again throw myself down in tears because
of the orphans. . . .' (Hildegarde Knef, The Gift Horse, Andre
Deutsch, 1 97 1.)

It's possible to turn unimaginative people into imaginative people
at a moment's notice. I remember an experiment referred to in the
: tish Journal of Psychology — probably in the summer of 1969 or
ir— in which some businessmen who had showed up as very dull
on work-association tests were asked to imagine themselves as happy-
go-lucky hippy types, in which persona they were retested, and showed
up as far more imaginative. In creativity tests you may be asked to
ggest different ways of using a brick; if you say things like 'Build a
use', or 'Build a wall', then you're classified as unimaginative — if
- say 'Grind it up and use it for diarrhoea mixture', or 'Rub off
warts with it', then you're imaginative. I'm oversimplifying, but you
get the general idea.

Some tests involve picture completion. You get given a lot of little
squares with signs in them, and you have to add something to the
sign. 'Uncreative' people just add another squiggle, or join up a 'C'

76 SPONTANEITY

shape to make a circle. 'Creative' people have a great time, parallel
lines become the trunk of a tree, a 'V on its side becomes the beam of
a lighthouse, and so on. It may be a mistake to think of such tests as
showing people to be creative, or uncreative. It may be that the tests
are recording different activities. The person who adds a timid
squiggle may be trying to reveal as little as possible about himself. If
we can persuade him to have fun, and not worry about being judged,
then maybe he can approach the test with the same attitude as a
'creative' person, just like the tired businessmen when they were
pretending to be hippies.

Most schools encourage children to be unimaginative. The research
so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their teachers.
Torrance gives an eye-witness account of an 'exceptionally creative
boy' who questioned one of the rules in the textbook: 'The teacher
became irate, even in the presence of the principal. She fumed, "So!
You think you know more than this book!" ' She was also upset when
the boy finished the problems she set almost as quickly as it took to
read them. 'She couldn't understand how he was getting the correct
answer and demanded that he write down all of the steps he had gone
through in solving each problem.'

When this boy transferred to another school, his new principal
telephoned to ask if he was the sort of boy 'who has to be squelched
rather roughly'. When it was explained that he was 'a very wholesome,
promising lad who needed understanding and encouragement' the new
principal exclaimed 'rather brusquely, "Well, he's already said too
much right here in my office!" * (E. P. Torrance, Guiding Creative
Talent, Prentice-Hall, 1962.)

One of my students spent two years in a classroom where the teacher
had put a large sign over the blackboard. It said 'Get into the "Yes,
Sir" attitude.' No doubt we can all add further anecdotes. Torrance
has a theory that 'many children with impoverished imaginations
have been subjected to rather vigorous and stern efforts to eliminate
fantasy too early. They are afraid to think.' Torrance seems to under-
stand the forces at work, but he still refers to attempts to eliminate
fantasy too early. Why should we eliminate fantasy at all? Once we
eliminate fantasy, then we have no artists.

Intelligence is proportional to population, but talent appears not to
be related to population numbers. I'm living in a city at the edge of
the Rocky Mountains; the population is much greater than it was in
Shakespearian London, and almost everyone here is literate, and has
had many thousands of dollars spent on his education. Where are the

SPONTANEITY 77

s, and playwrights, and painters, and composers? Remember that
are hundreds of thousands of 'literate' people here, while in
akespeare's London very few people could read. The great art of this
part of the world was the art of the native peoples. The whites
nder about trying to be 'original' and failing miserably.
You can get a glimmer of the damage done when you watch people
trying out pens in stationers' shops. They make feeble little scribbles
or fear of giving something away. If an Aborigine asked us for a
sample of Nordic art we'd have to direct him to an art gallery. No
Aborigine ever told an anthropologist, 'Sorry, Baas, I can't draw.'
Two of my students said they couldn't draw, and I asked, 'Why?' One
id her teacher had been sarcastic because she'd painted a blue
snowman (every child's painting was pinned up on the walls except
hers). The other girl had drawn trees up the sides of her paintings
(like Paul Klee), and the teacher drew a 'correct' tree on top of hers.
She remembered thinking 'I'll never draw for you again!' (One reason
»iven for filling in the windows of the local schools here is that it'll
1 make the children more attentive!)
Most children can operate in a creative way until they're eleven or
twelve, when suddenly they lose their spontaneity, and produce
of 'adult art'. When other races come into contact with
our culture something similar happens. The great Nigerian sculptor
Bamboya was set up as principal of an art school by some philan-
opic Americans in the 1920s. Not only did he fail to hand on his
talents, but his own inspiration failed him. He and his students could
still carve coffee tables for the whites, but they weren't inspired any
more.

So-called 'primitive painters' in our own culture sometimes go to
art school to improve themselves — and lose their talent. A critic told me
of a film school where each new student made a short film unaided.
These, he said, were always interesting, although technically crude.
At the end of the course they made a longer, technically more pro-
ficient film, which hardly anyone wanted to see. He seemed outraged
when I suggested they should close the school (he lectured there) ; yet
until recently our directors didn't get any training. Someone asked
ubrick if it was usual for a director to spend so much care on lighting
1 shot and he said, T don't know. I've never seen anyone else light
ifilm.'

You have to be a very stubborn person to remain an artist in this
. It's easy to play the role of 'artist', but actually to create some-
means going against one's education. I read an interview once

j8 SPONTANEITY

in which Grandma Moses was complaining that people kept urging
her to improve her snow scenes by putting blue in them, but she
insisted that the snow she saw was white, so she wouldn't do it. This
little old lady could paint because she defied the 'experts'. Even after
his works had been exhibited in court as proof that he wasn't in his
right mind, Henri Rousseau still had the stubbornness to go on paint-
ing!

We see the artist as a wild and aberrant figure. Maybe our artists
are the people who have been constitutionally unable to conform to
the demands of the teachers. Pavlov found that there were some dogs
that he couldn't 'brainwash' until he'd castrated them, and starved
them for three weeks. If teachers could do that to us, then maybe
they'd achieve Plato's dream of a republic in which there are no artists
left at all.

Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead
to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as
atrophied children. Many 'well adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative
frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of
assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult
entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education
and upbringing.

2

Many teachers express surprise at the switch-off that
occurs at puberty, but I don't, because first of all the child has to hide
the sexual turmoil he's in, and secondly the grown-ups' attitude to
him completely changes.

Suppose an eight-year-old writes a story about being chased down
a mouse-hole by a monstrous spider. It'll be perceived as 'childish' and
no one will worry. If he writes the same story when he's fourteen it
may be taken as a sign of mental abnormality. Creating a story, or
painting a picture, or making up a poem lay an adolescent wide open
to criticism. He therefore has to fake everything so that he appears
'sensitive' or 'witty' or 'tough' or 'intelligent' according to the image
he's trying to establish in the eyes of other people. If he believed he
was a transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what
his talents really were.

We have an idea that art is self-expression— which historically is
weird. An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something
else operated. He was a servant of the God. Maybe a mask-maker

SPONTANEITY 79

would have fasted and prayed for a week before he had a vision of the
Mask he was to carve, because no one wanted to see his Mask, they
wanted to see the God's. When Eskimos believed that each piece of
bone only had one shape inside it, then the artist didn't have to 'think
up' an idea. He had to wait until he knew what was in there — and this
is crucial. When he'd finished carving his friends couldn't say 'I'm a
bit worried about that Nanook at the third igloo', but only, 'He made
a mess getting that out !' or 'There are some very odd bits of bone
about these days.' These days of course the Eskimos get booklets
giving illustrations of what will sell, but before we infected them, they
were in contact with a source of inspiration that we are not. It's no
wonder that our artists are aberrant characters. It's not surprising that
great African sculptors end up carving coffee tables, or that the talent
of our children dies the moment we expect them to become adult.
Once we believe that art is self-expression, then the individual can be
criticised not only for his skill or lack of skill, but simply for being what
he is.

Schiller wrote of a 'watcher at the gates of the mind', who examines
ideas too closely. He said that in the case of the creative mind 'the
intellect has withdrawn its watcher from the gates, and the ideas rush
in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.'
He said that uncreative people 'are ashamed of the momentary passing
madness which is found in all real creators . . . regarded in isolation,
an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme,
but it may acquire importance from an idea that follows it; perhaps in
collation with other ideas which seem equally absurd, it may be cap-
able of furnishing a very serviceable link.'

My teachers had the opposite theory. They wanted me to reject and
discriminate, believing that the best artist was the one who made the
most elegant choices. They analysed poems to show how difficult
'real' writing was, and they taught that I should always know where
the writing was taking me, and that I should search for better and
better ideas. They spoke as if an image like 'the multitudinous seas
incarnadine' could have been worked out like the clue to a crossword
puzzle. Their idea of the 'correct' choice was the one anyone would
have made if he had thought long enough,
j I now feel that imagining should be as effortless as perceiving. In
order to recognise someone my brain has to perform amazing feats of
analysis : 'Shape . . . dark . . . swelling . . . getting closer . . . human . . .
nose type X15, eyes type E24B . . . characteristic way of walking . . .
look under relative . . .' and so on, in order to turn electromagnetic

80 SPONTANEITY

radiation into the image of my father, yet I don't experience myself as
'doing' anything at all ! My brain creates a whole universe without my
having the least sense of effort. Of course, if I say 'Hi Dad', and the
approaching figure ignores me, then I'd do something that I perceive
as 'thinking'. 'That's not the coat he usually wears,' I think, 'This
man is shorter.' It's only when I believe my perceptions to be in
error that I have to 'do' anything. It's the same with imagination.
Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be
'wrong', which is what our education encourages us to believe. Then
we experience ourselves as 'imagining', as 'thinking up an idea', but
what we're really doing is faking up the sort of imagination we think
we ought to have.

When I read a novel I have no sense of effort. Yet if I pay close
attenrion to my mental processes I find an amazing amount of activity.
'She walked into the room . . .' I read, and I have a picture in my
mind, very detailed, of a large Victorian room empty of furniture,
with the bare boards painted white around what used to be the edge
of the carpet. I also see some windows with the shutters open and
sunlight streaming through them. 'She noticed some charred papers
in the grate . . .' I read, and my mind inserts a fireplace which I've
seen in a friend's house, very ornate. 'A board creaked behind her . . .'
I read, and for a split second I see a Frankenstein's monster holding a
wet teddy bear. 'She turned to see a little wizened old man . . .',
instantly, the monster shrivels to Picasso with a beret, and the room
darkens and fills with furniture. My imagination is working as hard
as the writer's, but I have no sense of doing anything, or 'being
creative'.

A friend has just read the last paragraph and found it impossible
to imagine that she's being creative when she reads. I tell her I'll
invent a story especially for her. 'Imagine a man walking along
the street,' I say. 'Suddenly he hears a sound and turns to see some-
thing moving in a doorway . . .' I stop and ask her what the man is
wearing.

'A suit.'

'What sort of suit?'
'Striped.'

'Any other people in the street?'

'A white dog.'

'What was the street like?'

'It was a London street. Working-class. Some of the buildings have
been demolished.'

SPONTANEITY 8l

'Any windows boarded up?'
'Yes. Rusty corrugated iron.'
'So they've been boarded up a long time?'
She's obviously created much more than I have. She doesn't pause to
think up the answers to my questions, she 'knows' them. They flashed
automatically into her consciousness.

People may seem uncreative, but they'll be extremely ingenious at
rationalising the things they do. You can see this in people who obey
post-hypnotic suggestions, while managing to explain the behaviour
ordered by the hypnotist as being of their own volition.

People maintain prejudices quite effortlessly. For example, in this
conversation (R. B. Zajonc, Public Opinion Quarterly, Princeton, i960,
Vol. 24, 2, pp. 280-96):

mr x; The trouble with Jews is that they only take care of

their own group.
MR Y : But the record of the community chest shows that

they give more generously than non-Jews.
MR X : That shows that they are always trying to buy

favour and intrude in Christian affairs. They think
of nothing but money ; that's why there are so many
Jewish bankers.
mr y: But a recent study shows that the per cent of Jews
in banking is proportionally much smaller than the
per cent of non-Jews.
mr x: That's it. They don't go for respectable businesses.
They would rather run nightclubs,
a way this bigot is being very creative.

knew a man who was discovered stark naked in a wardrobe by an
husband. The wife screamed, 'I've never seen this man before in
- life.' T must be in the wrong flat,' said my friend. These reactions
't very satisfactory, but they didn't have to be 'thought up', they
; to mind quite automatically.
I sometimes shock students who have been trained by strict 'method'

'Be sad,' I say.
'What do you mean, be sad?'
'Just be sad. See whar happens.'
'But what's my motivation?'
'Just be sad. Start to weep and you'll
The student decides to humour me.
'That isn't very sad. You're just pretending.'

82 SPONTANEITY

'You asked me to pretend.'

'Raise your arm. Now, why are you raising it?'

'You asked me to.'

'Yes, but why might you have raised it?'
'To hold on to a strap in the Tube.'
'Then that's why you raised your arm.'
'But 1 could have given any reason.'

'Of course; you could have been waving to someone, or milking a
giraffe, or airing your armpit . . .'

'But I don't have time to choose the best reason.'

'Don't choose anything. Trust your mind. Take the first idea it
gives you. Now try being sad again. Hold the face in a sad position,
fight back the tears. Be unhappier. More. More. Now tell me why
you're in this state?'

'My child has died.'

'Did you think that up?'

'I just knew.'

'There you are, then.'

'My teacher said you shouldn't act adjectives.'

'You shouldn't act adjectives without justifying them.'

If an improviser is stuck for an idea, he shouldn't search for one,
he should trigger his partner's ability to give 'unthought' answers.

If someone starts a scene by saying 'What are you doing here?' then
his partner can instantly say, without thinking, 'I just came down to
get the milk, Sir.'

'Didn't I tell you what I'd do if I caught you again?'

'Oh Sir, don't put me in the refrigerator, Sir.'

If you don't know what to do in a scene, just say something like,
'Oh my God! What's that?'

This immediately jerks images into your partner's mind: 'Mother!'
he says, or 'That dog's messed the floor again', or 'A secret staircase!'
or whatever.

3

At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into
trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came
into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I
learned that my imagination wasn't 'good' enough. I learned that the
first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (i) psychotic; (2) obscene;
(3) unoriginal.

SPONTANEITY 83

The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and
unoriginal. My best known play — a one-acter called Moby Dick — is
about a servant who keeps his master's one remaining sperm in a
goldfish bowl. It escapes, grows to monstrous size, and has to be
hunted down on the high seas. This is certainly a rather obscene idea
to many people, and if I hadn't thrown away everything that my
teachers taught me, I could never have written it. These teachers,
who were so sure of the rules, didn't produce anything themselves at
all. I was one of a number of playwrights who emerged in the late
1950s, and it was remarkable that only one of us had been to a uni-
versity — that was John Arden — and he'd studied architecture.

Let's take a look at these three categories.

Psychotic Thought

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way
we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want
to be rejected by other people — and being classified insane is to be shut
out of the group in a very complete way.

Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little
crazier than the average person. People understand the energy
necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended
by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a perform-
ance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person
with the role.

Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. It's a
of presenting yourself as safe. Little old men wander around
iB hallucinating visibly, but no one gets upset. The same
viour in a younger, more vigorous person would get him shut
y. A Canadian study on attitudes to mental illness concluded that
it was when someone's behaviour was perceived as 'unpredictable'
that the community rejected them. A fat lady was admiring a painting
at a private view at the Tate when the artist strode over and bit her.
They threw him out, but no one questioned his sanity— it was how he
always behaved.

I once read about a man who believed himself to have a fish in his
jaw. (The case was reported in New Society.) This fish moved about,
and caused him a lot of discomfort. When he tried to tell people about
the fish, they thought him 'crazy', which led to violent arguments.
After he'd been hospitalised several times — with no effect on the fish —
it was suggested that perhaps he shouldn't tell anyone. After all it was
the quarrels that were getting him put away, rather than the delusion.

84 SPONTANEITY

Once he'd agreed to keep his problem secret, he was able to lead a
normal life. His sanity is like our sanity. We may not have a fish in our
jaw, but we all have its equivalent.

When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than of
one's mental processes, students are often hysterical with laughter.
They agree that for years they have been suppressing all sorts of think-
ing because they classified it as insane.

Students need a 'guru' who 'gives permission' to allow forbidden
thoughts into their consciousness. A 'guru' doesn't necessarily teach
at all. Some remain speechless for years, others communicate very
cryptically. All reassure by example. They are people who have been
into the forbidden areas and who have survived unscathed. I react
playfully with my students, while showing them that there are just as
many dead nuns or chocolate scorpions inside my head as there are in
anybody's, yet I interact very smoothly and sanely. It's no good telling
the student that he isn't to be held responsible for the content of his
imagination, he needs a teacher who is living proof that the monsters
are not real, and that the imagination will not destroy you. Otherwise
the student will have to go on pretending to be dull.

At one time I went from a class of mental patients in the morning
to a class of drama students in the afternoon. The work of the drama
students was far more bizarre, because they weren't so scared of what
their minds might do. The mental patients mistook even the normal
working of the imagination as proof of their insanity.

I remember the psychologist David Stafford-Clark criticising Ken
Campbell at a public meeting. Ken had said that he encouraged his
actors to act like lunatics, because then people would find them amus-
ing. Stafford-Clark was upset at the idea that mad people should be
thought 'funny', but that's hardly Ken's fault. Laughter is a whip that
keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either
you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it. We sup-
press our spontaneous impulses, we censor our imaginations, we learn
to present ourselves as 'ordinary', and we destroy our talent— then no
one laughs at us. If Shakespeare had been worried about establishing
his sanity, he could never have written Hamlet, let alone Titus
Andronicus; Harpo couldn't have inflated a rubber glove and milked it
into the coffee cups; 1 Groucho would never have threatened to horse-
whip someone — if he had a horse; W. C. Fields would never have
leapt out of the aeroplane after his whisky bottle; Stan Laurel would
never have snapped his fingers and ignited his thumb.

We all know instinctively what 'mad' thought is: mad thoughts are

SPONTANEITY 85

those which other people find unacceptable, and train us not to talk
about, but which we go to the theatre to see expressed.

Obscenity

I find many things obscene, in the sense of repulsive or
shocking. I find the use of film from real massacres in the tides of TV
shows pretty nasty. I find the way people take pills and smoke cigar-
ettes, and generally screw themselves up, rather awful. The way parents
and teachers often treat children nauseates me. Most people think of
obscene things as sexual like pubic hair, obscene language, but I'm
more shocked by modern cities, by the carcinogens in the air and in
the food, by the ever-increasing volume of radioactive materials in the
environment. In the first seven months of 1975 the cancer rate in
America seems to have jumped by 5.2 per cent, but few noticed— the
information didn't have 'news value'.

Most people's idea of what is or isn't obscene varies. In some
cultures certain times are set aside when the normal values are
reversed — the 'Lord of Misrule', Zuni clowning, many carnivals —
! something similar happens even in this culture, or so I'm told, at
office parties for example. People's tolerance of obscenity varies ac-
cording to the group they're with, or the particular circumstances
; devant les enf ants'). People can laugh at jokes told at a party that
they wouldn't find funny on a more formal occasion. It seems un-
fortunate to me that the classroom is often considered a 'formal' area
in this sense.

The first school I taught at had one woman teacher. When she went
t shopping at lunchtime, the men pulled their chairs round and told
■ stories non-stop. Down in the playground, as usual, the children
: swopping similar stories, or writing 'shit' or 'fuck' on the walls,
always correctly spelt; yet the staff considered the children 'dirty
little devils', and punished them for saying things which were far
*der than things the teachers themselves would say, and enjoy
hing at. When these children grow up, and perhaps crack up, then
"'11 find themselves in therapy groups where they'll be encouraged
say all the things that the teacher would have forbidden during

;ulkes and Anthony (in Group Psychotherapy, Penguin, 1972) say
a therapeutic situation is one 'in which the patient can freely voice
innermost thoughts towards himself, towards any other person, and
rds the analyst. He can be confident that he is not being judged,
that he is fully accepted, whatever he may be, or whatever he may

86 SPONTANEITY

disclose.' Later they add: 'We encourage the relaxation of censorship.
We do this by letting the patient members understand that they are
not only permitted, but expected to say anything that comes to mind.
We tell them not to allow any of their usual inhibitory considerations to
stand in the way of voicing the ideas that come to them spontaneously.'

I was at school more than twenty years ago, but in education the
more things change the more they are the same. (Recent research
suggests that the old 'monitor' system may be one of the most efficient
teaching methods!) Here are some answers that headmasters gave to a
questionnaire about sex education in their schools. (Reported in the
New Statesman, 28 February 1969.)

'I'm against all "frank discussion" of these matters.'

'Those who are determined to behave like animals can doubtless
find out the facts for themselves.'

'I am sick, sick of the talk about sex. I'll have none of it in mv
school.' '

'Everything that needs to be done in my school is done individually,
and in private by a missionary priest.'

Notice the use of 'my school' rather than 'our school'. Recently a
young girl burned to death because she was ashamed to run naked
from a burning house. To some extent her teachers are to blame.
Here's Sheila Kitzinger on some effects of middle-class prudery.

'In Jamaica I discovered that the West Indian peasant woman rarely
feels discomfort in the perineum, or minds the pressure of the baby's
head as it descends. But from the case studies of English middle-class
women it appears that many of them worry about dirtying the bed
and are often shocked by sensations against the rectum and the vagina
in labour— sensations which they may find excruciating. They feel
distressed, in fact, at just those sensations which the peasant woman
meets with equanimity.

'Some women find relaxation of the abdominal wall difficult, and
especially so when they experience any pain. They have been taught
to "hold their tummies in", and sometimes it goes against the grain to
release these muscles.' (Sheila Kitzinger, The Experience 0/ Childbirth,
Gollancz, 1962.) She adds that women with prolonged labours tended to
be 'inhibited, embarrassed by the processes taking place in their bodies,
ladylike in the extreme, and endured what they were undergoing
stoically as long as they were able, without expressing their anxieties.
It was not these women's bodies that were causing them difficulties;
they were being held up by the sort of people they were. They were
not able to give birth.'

SPONTANEITY 87

When I have been teaching in universities, I haven't experienced
any problem with censorship — at least not on 'sexual' grounds — and
I'm not saying that fear of obscenity is the most important factor in
making people reject the first ideas that come to them, but it does help
though, if improvisation teachers are not puritanical, and can allow
the students to behave as they want to behave. The best situation is
one in which the class is seen as a party, rather than a formal teacher-
pupil set-up. If it isn't possible to let students speak and act with the
same freedom they have outside the school, then it might be better not
to teach them drama at all. The most repressed, and damaged, and
'unteachable' students that I have to deal with are those who were the
star performers at bad high schools. Instead of learning how to be warm
and spontaneous and giving, they've become armoured and superficial,
calculating and self-obsessed. I could show you many many examples
where education has clearly been a destructive process.

My feeling isn't that the group should be 'obscene', but that they
should be aware of the ideas that are occurring to them. I don't want
them to go rigid and blank out, but to laugh, and say 'I'm not saying
that' or whatever.

Originality

Many students block their imaginations because
they're afraid of being unoriginal. They believe they know exactly
hat originality is, just as critics are always sure they can recognise
things that are avant-garde.

We have a concept of originality based on things that already exist.
I'm told that avant-garde theatre groups in Japan are just like those in
the West — well of course, or how would we know what they were?
Anyone can run an avant-garde theatre group ; you just get the actors
to lie naked in heaps or outstare the audience, or move in extreme
slow motion, or whatever the fashion is. But the real avant-garde
aren't imitating what other people are doing, or what they did forty
years ago; they're solving the problems that need solving, like how to
get a popular theatre with some worth-while content, and they may
not look avant-garde at all !

The improviser has to realise that the more obvious he is, the more
original he appears. I constantly point out how much the audience
like someone who is direct, and how they always laugh with pleasure
at a really 'obvious' idea. Ordinary people asked to improvise will
search for some 'original' idea because they want to be thought clever.
They'll say and do all sorts of inappropriate things. If someone says

88 SPONTANEITY

'What's for supper?' a bad improviser will desperately try to think up
something original. Whatever he says he'll be too slow. He'll finally
drag up some idea like 'fried mermaid'. If he'd just said 'fish' the
audience would have been delighted. No two people are exactly alike,
and the more obvious an improviser is, the more himself he appears.
If he wants to impress us with his originality, then he'll search out
ideas that are actually commoner and less interesting. I gave up asking
London audiences to suggest where scenes should take place. Some
idiot would always shout out either 'Leicester Square public lavatories'
or 'outside Buckingham Palace' (never 'inside Buckingham Palace').
People trying to be original always arrive at the same boring old
answers. Ask people to give you an original idea and see the chaos
it throws them into. If they said the first thing that came into their
head, there'd be no problem.

An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He's not making any
decisions, he's not weighing one idea against another. He's accepting
his first thoughts. How else could Dostoyevsky have dictated one
novel in the morning and one in the afternoon for three weeks in
order to fulfil his contracts? If you consider the volume of work pro-
duced by Bach then you get some idea of his fluency (and we've lost
half of it), yet a lot of his time was spent rehearsing, and teaching
Latin to the choirboys. According to Louis Schlosser, Beethoven
said: 'You ask me where I get my ideas? That I can't say with any
certainty. They come unbidden, direcdy, I could grasp them with
my hands.' Mozart said of his ideas: 'Whence and how they come, I
know not; nor can I force them. Those that please me I retain in the
memory, and I am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them.'
Later in the same letter he says : 'Why my productions take from my
hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish, and
different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the
same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or in short,
makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I
really do not study or aim at any originality.'

Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like
a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all the
rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your
true self, and makes your work mediocre.

SPONTANEITY 89

Let's see how these theories work out in practice.
Suppose I say to a student, 'Imagine a box. What's in it?' Answers
will flash into his mind uninvited. Perhaps :
'Uncle Ted, dead.'

If he said this then people would laugh, and he'd seem good-
natured and witty, but he doesn't want to be thought 'insane', or
callous. 'Hundreds of toilet rolls', says his imagination, but he doesn't
want to appear preoccupied with excretion. 'A big, fat, coiled snake'?
No — too Freudian. Finally after a pause of perhaps two whole
seconds he says 'Old clothes' or 'It's empty', and feels unimaginative
and defeated.

I say to a student, 'Name some objects.'

He tenses up. 'Er . . . pebble . . . er . . . beach . . . cliff . . . er . . .
er . . .'

'Have you any idea why you've blocked?' I ask.
'I keep thinking of "pebble".'

'Then say it. Say whatever occurs to you. It doesn't have to be
original.' Actually it would be very original to keep saying the same
word : 'Pebble. Another pebble. A big pebble. A pebble with a hole in
it. A pebble with a white mark. The pebble with a hole in it again.'
'Say a word', I say to someone else.
'Er . . . er . . . cabbage,' he says looking alarmed.
'That's not the word you first thought of.'
'What?'

'I saw your lips move. They formed an "O" shape.'
'Orange.'

'What's wrong with the word orange?'
'Cabbage seemed more ordinary.'

This student wants to appear wmmaginative. What sort of crippling

aces must he have gone through before he came to me?
'What's the opposite of "starfish"? '

'Answer, say it,' I shout, because I can see that he did think of
something.

'Sunflower,' he says, amazed because he didn't know that was the
'dea that was about to come out of him.
A student mimes taking something off a shelf.
'What is it?' I ask.
'A book.'

90 SPONTANEITY

'I saw your hand reject an earlier shape. What did you want to take?'

'A tin of sardines.'

'Why didn't you?'

'I don't know.'

'Was it open?'

'Yes.'

'All messy?'
'Yes.'

'Maybe you were opting for a pleasanter object. Mime taking
something else off a shelf.'
His mind goes blank.
'I can't seem to think of anything.'
'Do you know why?'
'I keep thinking of the sardines.'
'Why don't you take down another tin of sardines?'
'I wanted to be original.'

I ask a girl to say a word. She hesitates and says 'Pig.'

'What was the first word you thought of?'

'Pea.'

'Tell me a colour.'
Again she hesitates.
'Red.'

'What colour did you think of first?'
'Pink.'

'Invent a name for a stone.'
'Ground.'

'What was the name you first thought of?'
'Pebble.'

Normally the mind doesn't know that it's rejecting the first answers
because they don't go into the long-term memory. If I didn't ask her
immediately, she'd deny that she was substituting better words.

'Why don't you tell me the first answers that occur to you?'

'They weren't significant.'

I suggest to her that she didn't say 'Pea' because it suggested
urination, that maybe she rejects pink because it reminds her of flesh.
She agrees, and then says that she rejected 'Pebble' because she didn't
want to say three words beginning with W. This girl isn't really slow,
she doesn't need to hesitate. Teaching her to accept the first idea will
make her seem far more inventive.

The first time I meet a group I might ask them to mime taking a hat
off, or to mime taking something off a shelf, or out of their pocket. I

1

SPONTANEITY 91

won't watch them while they do it; I'll probably look out of the
window. Afterwards I explain that I'm not interested in what they
did, but in how their minds worked. I say that either they can put
their hand out, and see what it closes on; or else they can think first,
decide what they'll pick up, and then do the mime. If they're worried
about failing, then they'll have to think first; if they're being playful,
then they can allow their hand to make its own decision.

Suppose I decide to pick up something. I can put my hand down
and pick up something dangly. It's an old, used rubber contraceptive,
which isn't something I would have chosen to pick up, but it is what
my hand 'decided' to close on. My hand is very likely to pick up
something I don't want, like a steaming horse-turd, but the audience
will be delighted. They don't want me to think up something re-
spectable to mime, like a bucket or a suitcase. I ask the class to try
doing the mime both with and without 'thinking' so that they can
sense the difference. If I make people produce object after object, then
very likely they'll stop bothering to think first, and just swing along
being mildly interested in what their hands select. Here's a sequence
that was filmed, so I remember it pretty well. I said:

'Put your hand into an imaginary box. What do you take out?'

'A cricket ball.'

'Take something else out.'

'Another cricket ball.'

'Unscrew it. What's inside?'

'A medallion.'

'What's written on it?'

' "Christmas 1948." '

'Put both hands in. What have you got?'

'A box.'

'What's written on it?'

' "Export only." *

'Open it and take something out.'

'A pair of rubber corsets.'

'Put your hands in the far corners of the box. What have you got?'
'Two lobsters.'

'Leave them. Take out a handful of something.'
'Dust.'

'Feel about in it.'
♦A pearl.'

'Taste it. What's it taste of?'
'Pear drops.'

92 SPONTANEITY
'Take something off a shelf.'
'A shoe.'
'What size?'
'Eleven.'

'Reach for something behind you.'
He laughs.
'What is it?'
'A breast

Notice that I'm helping him to fantasise by continually changing
the 'set' (i.e. the category) of the questions.

5

There are people who prefer to say 'Yes', and there are
people who prefer to say 'No'. Those who say 'Yes' are rewarded by
the adventures they have, and those who say 'No' are rewarded by the
safety they attain. There are far more 'No' sayers around than 'Yes'
savers, but you can train one type to behave like the other. 3

'Your name Smith?'

'No.'

'Oh . . . are you Brown, then?'
'Sorry.'

'Well, have you seen either of them?'
'I'm afraid not.'

Whatever the questioner had in mind has now been demolished and
he feels fed up. The actors are in total conflict.

Had the ;
pletely different.

'Your name Smith?'

'Yes.'

'You're the one who's been mucking about with my wife then?'
'Very probably.'
'Take that, you swine.'
'Augh!'

Fred Karno understood this. When he interviewed aspiring actors
he'd poke his pen into an empty inkwell and pretend to flick ink at
them. If they mimed being hit in the eye, or whatever, he'd engage
them. If they looked baffled, and 'blocked' him, then he wouldn't.

There is a link with status transactions here, since low-status
players tend to accept, and high-status players to block. High-status
players will block any action unless they feel they can control it. The

SPONTANEITY 93

high-status player is obviously afraid of being humiliated in front of
an audience, but to block your partner's ideas is to be like the drown-
ing man who drags down his rescuer. There's no reason why you can't
play high status, and yet yield to other people's invention.

'Is your name Smith?'

'And what if it is?'

'You've been making indecent suggestions to my wife.'
'I don't consider them indecent!'

Many teachers get improvisers to work in conflict because conflict
is interesting but we don't actually need to teach competitive be-
haviour; the students will already be expert at it, and it's important
that we don't exploit the actors' conflicts. Even in what seems to be a
tremendous argument, the actors should still be co-operating, and
coolly developing the action. The improviser has to understand that
his first skill lies in releasing his partner's imagination. What happens
in my classes, if the actors stay with me long enough, is that they learn
how their 'normal' procedures destroy other people's talent. Then,
one day they have a flash of satori— they suddenly understand that
all the weapons they were using against other people they also use
inwardly, against themselves.

'Working' Someone

Bill Gaskill used to make one actor responsible for the
content and development of the scene, while his partner just 'assisted'.
'Have you got it?'
'Here it is, Sir.'
'Well, unwrap it.'
'Here you are, Sir.'
'Well, help me put it on.'
'There, Sir. I think it's a good fit.'
'And the helmet.'
'How's that, Sir?'

'Excellent. Now close the faceplate and start pumping. I shall give
give three tugs on the rope when I find the wreck. Can't be more than
twenty fathoms.'

If you concentrate on the task of involving your assistant in some
action, then a scene evolves automatically. In my view the game is
most elegant when the audience have no idea that one actor is working
the other.

'Good morning.'

'Good morning.'

9 4 SPONTANEITY

•Yes . . . shall I sit here?'
'Oh, yes, Sir.'

The first actor sits at a slant in the chair and opens his mouth. The
second actor 'catches on' and mimes pumping the chair higher, like
a dentist.

'Having some trouble, Sir?'

'Yes. It's one of these molars.'

'Hmm. Let's see now. Upper two occlusal . . .'

'Aaaauuuggghh !'

'My goodness, that is sensitive.'

The trick is not to think of getting the assistant to do things, but of
ways of getting each other into trouble.
'The regular dentist is on holiday, is he?'
'Yes, Sir.'

'I must say, you seem rather young.'
'Just out of dental school, Sir.*
'Will you have to extract it? I mean, is it urgent?'
'I'll say it's urgent, Sir. Another day or so and that would have
exploded.'

The audience will be convinced that it's the dentist who is con-
trolling the scene. When improvisers are anxious, each person tries
to 'carry' the whole scene by himself. Putting the responsibility ail on
to one person helps them work more calmly.'*

Blocking and Accepting

Blocking is a form of aggression. I say this because if
I set up a scene in which two students are to say 'I love you' to each
other, they almost always accept each other's ideas. Many students
do their first interesting, unforced improvisations during 'I love you'
scenes.

If I say 'start something' to two inexperienced improvisers, they'll
probably talk, because speech feels safer than action. And they'll
block any possibility of action developing.

'Hallo, how are you.'

'Oh, same as usual. Nice day, isn't it.'

'Oh I don't think so.'

If one actor yawns his partner will probably say 'I do feel fit today.'
Each actor tends to resist the invention of the other actor, playing for
time, until he can think up a 'good' idea, and then he'll try to make
his partner follow it. The motto of scared improvisers is 'when in
doubt, say "NO".' We use this in life as a way of blocking action.

SPONTANEITY 95

Then we go to the theatre, and at all points where we would say 'No' in
life, we want to see the actors yield, and say 'Yes'. Then the action we
would suppress if it happened in life begins to develop on the stage.

If you'll stop reading for a moment and think of something you
wouldn't want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then you'll
have thought of something worth staging or filming. We don't want to
walk into a restaurant and be hit in the face by a custard pie* and we
don't want to suddenly glimpse Grannie's wheelchair racing towards
the edge of the cliff, but we'll pay money to attend enactments of such
events. In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All
the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates
very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a
high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action:

'Sit down, Smith.' * to *e

'Thank you, Sir.'

'It's about the wife, Smith.'

'She told you about it has she, Sir?'

'Yes, yes, she's made a clean breast of it.'

Neither actor is quite sure what the scene is about but he's willing
to play along, and see what emerges.

At first students don't realise when they're blocking or yielding,
and they're not very good at recognising when it's happening with
other students. Some students prefer to yield (these are 'charming'
people) but most prefer to block, even though they may have no idea
exactly what they are doing. I often stop an improvisation to explain
how the blocking is preventing the action from developing. Videotape
is a great help : you replay the transaction, and it's obvious to everyone.
A: Augh!

B: What's the matter?

A: I've got my trousers on back to front.

B: I'll take them off.

A: No!

The scene immediately fizzles out. A blocked because he didn't want
to get involved in miming having his trousers taken off, and having to
pretend embarrassment, so he preferred to disappoint the audience.
I ask them to start a similar scene, and to avoid blocking if possible.
A: Augh!

B: {Holding him) Steady!
A: My back hurts.

B: No, it doesn't . . . Yes, you're right.
B has noticed his error in blocking, which resulted from his wishing to

96 SPONTANEITY

stick to the trouser idea. A then blocks his own idea by shifting to
another.

A: I'm having trouble with my leg.
B: I'm afraid I'll have to amputate.
A: You can't do that, Doctor.
B: Why not?

A: Because I'm rather attached to it.

B: {Losing heart) Come, man.

A: I've got this growth on my arm too, Doctor.
During this scene B gets increasingly fed up. Both actors experience
the other as rather difficult to work with. They can say 'The scene isn't
working', but they still don't consciously realise why. I've written
down the dialogue while they were playing the scene, and I go
through it, and explain exactly how they were interacting, and why B
was looking more and more depressed.
I get them to start the scene again, and this time they've understood.

A: Augh!

B: Whatever is it, man?
A: It's my leg, Doctor.
B : This looks nasty. I shall have to amputate.
A: It's the one you amputated last time, Doctor.
(This is not a block because he's accepted the amputation.)

B: You mean you've got a pain in your wooden leg?

A: Yes, Doctor.

B: You know what this means?

A: Not woodworm, Doctor!

B: Yes. We'll have to remove it before it spreads to the
rest of you.
(A's chair collapses.)
B: My God! It's spreading to the furniture! (And so on.)
The interest to the audience lies in their admiration and delight in
the actors' attitude to each other. We so seldom see people working
together with such joy and precision.
Here's another scene I noted down.
A: Is your name Smith?
B: Yes.

A : I've brought the . . . car.
I interrupt and ask him why he hesitated. A says he doesn't know,
so I ask him what he was going to say. He says 'Elephant'.

'You didn't want to say "elephant" because there was one men-
tioned in the last scene.'

SPONTANEITY 97

'That's right.'
'Stop trying to be original.'
I make them restart the scene.

A: I've brought the elephant.
B : For the gelding?
A: (Loudly) Nol

The audience groan and cry out with disappointment. They were
enthralled with the possibilities latent in a scene about gelding an
elephant, the elephant suddenly fizzing down to nothing at the first
, or cutting the trunk off by mistake, or a severed penis chasing the
about the room. But of course this is why A felt impelled to
He didn't want to be involved in anything so obscene or
He resisted the very thing that the audience longed to
see.

I call anything that an actor does an 'offer'. Each offer can either be
accepted, or blocked. If you yawn, your partner can yawn too, and
therefore accept your offer.

A block is anything that prevents the action from developing, or
that wipes out your partner's premise. 5 If it develops the action it
isn't a block. For example:

'Your name Smith?'

'What if it is, you horrible little man!'

This is not a block, even though the answer is antagonistic. Again:
'I've had enough of your incompetence, Perkins ! Please leave.'
'No, Sir!'

This isn't a block either. The second speaker has accepted that he's
a servant, and he accepts the situation, one of annoyance between
himself and his employer.

If a scene were to start with someone saying 'Unhand me, Sir
Jasper, let me go', and her partner said 'All right, do what you like,
then', this is probably a block. It would get a laugh but it would create
bad feeling.

Once you have established the categories of 'offer', 'block' and
ept' you can give some very interesting instructions. For example,
can ask an actor to make dull offers, or interesting offers, or to
at', or to 'accept and block' and so on.
You can programme two actors so that A offers and accepts, and
B offers and blocks.

A: Hallo, are you a new member?
B: No, I've come to fix the pipes. You got a leak
somewhere?

98 SPONTANEITY

A: Yes, oh, thank goodness. There's three feet of water

in the basement.
B: Basement? You ain't got a basement.
A: No, well, er, the boiler-room. It's just down a few

steps. You've not brought your tools.
B: Yes I have. I'm miming them.
A: Oh, silly of me. I'll leave you to it then.
B : Oh no. I need an assistant. Hand mc that pipe
wrench. (And so on.)
Sometimes both actors can block as well as offer. Bad improvisers
do this all the time, of course, but when you tell people to block each
other their morale doesn't collapse so easily. This again suggests to
me that blocking is aggressive. If the order comes from me, the
actors don't take it personally.

A: Are you nervous?

B : Not at all. I can see that you are.

A: Nonsense. I'm just warming my fingers up. You're

taking the piano exam, are you?
B: I'm here for my flying lesson.
A: In a bathing costume?
B: I always wear a bathing costume.
Me: You've accepted the bathing costume.
{laughter.)

An interesting offer can be 'The house is on fire!', or 'My heart!
Quick, my pills!' but it can also be something non-specific. 'All right,
Where's the parcel?' or 'Shall I sit here, Doctor?' are interesting
offers, because we want to know what will happen next. Even 'AH
right, begin' is OK. Your partner can beat you on the head with a
balloon, and you thank him, and the audience are delighted.

Here's an example in which A makes dull offers, while B makes
interesting offers.

A: (Dull offer.) Good morning!

B: (Accepts.) Good morning. (Makes interesting offer.)

Great heavens! Frank! Did they let you out?

Have you escaped?
A: (Accepts.) I hid in the laundry van. (Makes dull

offer.) I see you've had the place redecorated.
B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) Yes ... but .. .

look . . . about the money. You'll get your share. It

wasn't my idea to cut you out. I've . . . I've got a

good business here . . .

SPONTANEITY 99
A : (Accepts, makes dull offer.) Yes, it's a step up in
the world.

B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) It was different
in the old days ... I ... I didn't mean to rat on
you Charlie . . .

The actors have automatically become involved in some sort of
gangster scene, but all they actually worry about is the category the
offers fit into. The scene 'looks after itself'.

Scenes spontaneously generate themselves if both actors offer and
accept alternately.

'Haven't we met before?'

'Yes, wasn't it at the yacht club?'

'I'm not a member.'

(Accepts the yacht club. A bad improviser would say 'what yacht
club?')

'Ah, I'm sorry.'
'School!'

'That's right. I was in the first form and you were one of the school
leavers.'
'Pomeroy!'
'Snodgrass !'
'After all these years!'

'What do you mean, after all these years? It seems only yesterday
that you were beating me up every lunchtime.'

'Oh well . . . boys will be boys. Was it you we held out of the
windows by your feet?'

'Butternngers.'

'I see you're still wearing the brace.'

Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks prearranged.
This is because they accept all offers made — which is something no
'normal' person would do. Also they may accept offers which weren't
really intended. I tell my actors never to think up an offer, but instead
to assume that one has already been made. Groucho Marx understood
this : a contestant at his quiz game 'froze' so he took the man's pulse
and said, 'Either this man's dead or my watch has stopped.' If you
notice that you are shorter than your partner you can say 'Simpkins!
Didn't I forbid you ever to be taller than me?' — which can lead on to
a scene in which the servant plays on all fours, or a scene in which the
master is starting to shrink, or a scene in which the servant has been
replaced by his elder brother, or whatever. If your partner is sweating,
fan yourself. If he yawns, say 'Late, isn't it?'

IOO SPONTANEITY

Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer
interrupt the action. When someone's chair collapsed Stanislavsky
berated him for not continuing, for not apologising to the character
whose house he was in. This attitude makes for something really amaz-
ing in the theatre. The actor who will accept anything that happens
seems supernatural; it's the most marvellous thing about improvisa-
tion: you are suddenly in contact with people who are unbounded,
whose imagination seems to function without limit.

By analysing everything into blocks and acceptances, the students
get insight into the forces that shape the scenes, and they understand
why certain people seem difficult to work with.

These 'offer-block-accept' games have a use quite apart from actor
training. People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by
chance. In reality everyone chooses more or less what kind of events
will happen to them by their conscious patterns of blocking and yield-
ing. A student objected to this view by saying, 'But you don't choose
your life. Sometimes you are at the mercy of people who push you
around.' I said, 'Do you avoid such people?' 'Oh!' she said, 'I see what
you mean.'

6

Here are some games I've used with my students.
'Two Places'

You can play very funny scenes in which one char-
acter plays, for example, waiting at a bus stop, while another character
claims that the stage is his living-room, and so on. Such scenes exploit
blocking very successfully. (This game comes from the Royal Court
Writers' Group, circa 1959.)

'Presents'

I invented a rather childish game, which is now often
used with small children, but works really well with grown-ups, if
you coax them through their initial resistance.

I divide people into pairs and call them A and B. A gives a present
to B who receives it. B then gives a present back, and so on. At first
each person thinks of giving an interesting present, but then I stop
them and suggest that they can just hold their hands out, and see
what the other person chooses to take. If you hold out both hands
about three feet apart, then obviously it will be a larger present, but

SPONTANEITY IOI

you don't have to determine what your gift is. The trick is to make the
thing you are given as interesting as possible. You want to 'overaccept'
the offer. Everything you are given delights you. Maybe you wind it up
and let it walk about the floor, or you sit it on your arm and let it fly off
after a small bird, or maybe you put it on and turn into a gorilla.

An important change of thinking is involved here. When the actor
concentrates on making the thing he gives interesting, each actor
seems in competition, and feels it. When they concentrate on making
the gift they receive interesting, then they generate warmth between
them. We have strong resistances to being overwhelmed by gifts,
even when they're just being mimed. You have to get the class en-
thusiastic enough to go over the 'hump'. Then suddenly great joy
and energy are released. Playing in gibberish helps.

'Blind Offers'

An inexperienced improviser gets annoyed because
his partners misunderstand him. He holds out his hand to see if it's
raining, and his partner shakes it and says 'Pleased to meet you.' 'What
an idiot', thinks the first actor, and begins to sulk. When you make a
blind offer, you have no intention to communicate at all. Your partner
accepts the offer, and you say 'Thank you.' Then he makes an inten-
tionless gesture, and you accept that, and he says 'Thank you' and so
on.

A strikes a pose.
B photographs him.
A says 'Thank you.'

B stands on one leg, and bends the other.

A straddles the bent leg and 'nails a horseshoe on it'.

B thanks him and lies on the ground.

A mimes shovelling earth over him.

B thanks him . . . And so on.

Don't underestimate the value of this game. It's a way of interacting
that the audience love to see. They will watch fascinated, and every
time someone says 'Thank you', they laugh!

It's best to offer a gesture which moves away from the body. When
you've made a gesture, you then freeze in the position until your
partner reacts.

Once the basic technique has been mastered, the next step is to
get the actors to play the game while discussing some quite different
subject.

'A touch of autumn in the air today, James,' says A, stretching his

102 SPONTANEITY
hand out. 'Yes, it is a little brisk,' says B, peeling a glove off A's hand.
B then lies on the floor. 'Is the Mistress at home?' says A, wiping his
feet on B . . . and so on. The effect is startling, because each actor
seems to have a telepathic understanding of the other's intentions.

It's Tuesday'

This game is based on 'overaccepting'. We called it
'It's Tuesday' because that's how we started the game. If A says
something matter of fact to B, like 'It's Tuesday', then maybe B tears
his hair, and says 'My God! The Bishop's coming. What'll he do
when he sees the state everything's in?' or instead of being upset he
can be overcome with love because it's his wedding day. All that mat-
ters is that an inconsequential remark should produce the maximum
possible effect on the person it's said to.
A: It's Tuesday.

B : No ... it can't be . . . It's the day predicted for my
death by the old gypsy!
(It doesn't matter how crummy the idea is, what matters is the in-
tensity of the reaction.) Now B turns white, clutches his throat,
staggers into the audience, reels back, bangs his head on the wall,
somersaults backwards, and 'dies' making horrible noises, and saying
at his last gasp:

B: Feed the goldfish.
A now plays 'It's Tuesday' on the goldfish remark. Maybe he
expresses extreme jealousy:

A: That's all he ever thought about, that goldfish.
What am I to do now? Haven't I served him
faithfully all these years? (Weeps on knee of
audience member.') He's always preferred that
goldfish to me. Do forgive me, Madam. Does . . .
does anyone have a Kleenex? Fifty years' supply of
ants' eggs, and what did he leave to me— not a
penny. {Throws spectacular temper tantrum.) I shall
write to Mother.

This last remark introduces new material, so that B now plays 'It's
Tuesday' on that.

B: {Recovering) Your mother! You mean Milly is still
alive?

He then plays passionate yearning, until he can't take the emotion any
further and throws in another 'ordinary' remark. Any remark will
do. 'Forgive me Jenkins, I got rather carried away.' Maybe Jenkins

SPONTANEITY I03

can then do a five-minute 'hate' tirade: 'Forgive you? After the way
you hounded her? Turning her out into the snow that Christmas Eve
. . .' and so on.

Three or four sentences can easily last ten minutes, when expanded
a little, and the audience are astounded and delighted. They don't
expect improvisers, or actors for that matter, to take things to such
extremes.

I would classify 'It's Tuesday' as a 'make boring offers, and
overaccept' game.

'Yes, But . . .'

This is a well known 'accept-and-block' game (de-
scribed in Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre). (Its twin
game 'Yes, and . . .' is an 'accept-and-offer' game.) I'll describe it
because there are two ways of playing which produce opposite results,
and which tell one a lot about the nature of spontaneity.

A asks questions that B can say 'Yes' to. B then says 'But . . .' and
then whatever occurs to him. To play the game badly, B should think
of his reply before he begins to speak.

'Excuse me, is that your dog?'

'Yes, but I'm thinking of selling him.'

'Will you sell him to me?'

'Yes, but he's expensive.'

'Is he healthy?'

'Yes, but you can take him to a vet to check him out if you like.'
(And so on.)

Probably the audience do not laugh, and probably the actors don't
enjoy the experience much. This is because the more logical, rational
part of the mind is in control.

If you reply 'Yes, but . . .' with enthusiasm, as soon as the question
is put to you, and then say whatever comes into your head, the scenes
are quite different. I'll play it with myself now, typing as quickly as
possible.

'Don't I know you?'

'Yes, but I'm going.'

'You took my money!'

'Yes, but I've spent it.'

'You're a swine.'

'Yes, but everyone knows that.'

This time an audience would probably laugh. It's worth teaching
both ways of playing the game. It can demonstrate to uptight people

104 SPONTANEITY

exactly how cautious they usually are. Also it's very funny to launch
out strongly on 'Yes, but . . .*, and then have to complete the sentence
off the top of your head.

Verse

If the students are in a really happy mood, I might
ask them to improvise in verse. At first they're appalled. I'll already
have made them play scenes in gibberish, and as impromptu operas,
but they'll have been turned off verse by school, while at the same time
retaining an exaggerated respect for it.

To me the most enjoyable thing about verse is its spontaneity. You
can 'fake up' verse by deciding what to write, and then thinking up
the rhymes, but if you're asked to improvise it you just have to aban-
don conscious control, and let the words come of their own accord.

I start to talk in verse, and explain that it doesn't matter whether
the verse is good or bad, and that anyway we're going to start with
the worst possible verse :

'Tom and Else take your places,
A happy smile on your faces,
Don't start wondering what to say
Or we will never start today!
We'll have Tom come in and propose
'Cause Else's pregnant, I suppose . . .'
The worse the verse I speak, the more encouraged the actors are.
I get them to stop thinking ahead, and just say a line, and trust to luck
that there'll be something to rhyme with it. If they're in trouble and
can't think what to say, they're not to rack their brain, and try and
force their inspiration. I get them to say 'prompt' and then either I
shout something out, or one of the audience does.

Once a scene starts, the verse has to control the content and the
action. Someone says:

'At last I've got you in my clutches :
I'll keep you here and take your crutches.'
He won't make any attempt to mime taking crutches away from his
partner though, until I yell 'Take the crutches!' Then his partner
falls over and says :

'Oh, please Sir Jasper, let me go!
You must not treat a cripple so . . .'
'Oh no! I'll not be robbed of my revenge!
I'll sacrifice you here in old Stonehenge.'
He makes no attempt to sacrifice her, I have to tell him:

SPONTANEITY 105

'Do it— it's what you said!
Everyone wants to see her dead.'
'Lie down on yonder block and pray . . . prompt?'
'I'll kill her at the break of day . . .' suggests someone in the
audience.

No one in their right senses would think up a scene about sacri-
ficing a cripple at Stonehenge, but the verse precipitates it. My job is
to get the actors to go where the verse takes them. If you don't care
what you say, and you go with the verse, the exercise is exhilarating.
But if an actor suddenly produces a really witty couplet, you'll see
him suddenly 'dry' as his standard rises, and he tries to produce
'better' verse.

7

Reading about spontaneity won't make you more
spontaneous, but it may at least stop you heading off in the opposite
direction; and if you play the exercises with your friends in a good
spirit, then soon all your thinking will be transformed. Rousseau
began an essay on education by saying that if we did the opposite of
what our own teachers did we'd be on the right track, and this still
holds good.

The stages I try to take students through involve the realisation (1)
that we struggle against our imaginations, especially when we try to
be imaginative; (2) that we are not responsible for the content of our
imaginations; and (3) that we are not, as we are taught to think, our
'personalities', but that the imagination is our true self.

NOTES

1. I don't know who originated the rubber glove gag, but in his book
King of Comedy (Peter Davies, 1955) Mack Sennett attributes ic to Felix
Adler.

2. Teachers are obliged to impose a censorship on their pupils, and in
consequence schools provide an anti-therapeutic environment. In
Interacting with Patients (Macmillan, New York, 1963), a work intended
for nurses, Joyce Samhammer Hays and Kenneth Larson describe
therapeutic and non-therapeutic ways of interacting. Here are their first

~ 'therapeutic techniques'.

Therapeutic techniques Examples
Using silence:

Accepting: Yes.

Uh Hmm.

I follow what you said.
Nodding.

106 SPONTANEITY
Giving recognition:

Offering self:

Giving broad openings :

Good morning, Mr S.
You've tooled a leather wallet.
I notice that you've combed your hair.
I'll sit with you a while.
I'll stay here with you.
I'm interested in your comfort.
Is there something you'd like to talk
about?

What are you thinking about?
Where would you like to begin?
Go on.
And then?
Tell me about it.
What seemed to lead up to . . .?
Was this before or after . . .?
When did this happen?
You appear tense.

Are you uncomfortable when you . . .
I notice you are biting your lips.
It makes me uncomfortable when
you . . .

Tell me when you feel anxious.
What is happening?
What does the voice seem to
Was this something like . . .?
Have you had similar experiences?

Obviously the book has psychiatric nurses in mind, but it's interesting
to compare it to teacher-pupil interactions. Here are the first ten 'non-
therapeutic techniques'.

Placing the event in time or in
sequence:

Making observations:

Encouraging description of
perceptions:

Encouraging comparison :

Non-therapeutic
Reassuring:

Giving approval:

Rejecting:

Disapproving:

Agreeing:

Disagreeing:

Probing:

Examples

I wouldn't worry about . . .

Everything will be all right.

You're coming along fine.

That's good.

I'm glad that you . . .

Let's not discuss . . .

I don't want to hear about .

That's bad.

I'd rather you wouldn't . . .
That's right.
I agree.
That's wrong.
I definitely disagree
I don't believe that.
I think you should . . .
Why don't you . . .?
Now tell me about . . .

SPONTANEITY 107

But how can you be President of the
United States?

If you're dead, why is your heart beating?
Testing: What day is this?

Do you know what kind of a hospital this is?
Do you still have the idea that . . .?

I'm doing the book an injustice by quoting out of context, but it's
widely available, and it analyses many interactions. Schools make it difficult
for teachers to interact therapeutically. Thinking back to my own schooling,
I remember how isolated the teachers were, how there were only certain
areas in which you could communicate with them at all. If teachers were
allowed to interact in a therapeutic manner, then the adjective 'school-
teachery' would not be disparaging.

3. When I meet a new group of students they will usually be 'naysayers'.
This term and its opposite, 'yeasayers', come from a paper by Arthur
Couch and Kenneth Kenison, who were investigating the tendency of
people answering questionnaires to be generally affirmative, or generally
negative in attitude. They wrote in Freudian terms :

'We have arrived at a fairly consistent picture of the variables that
differentiate yeasayers from naysayers. Yeasayers seem to be "id-domin-
ated" personalities, with little concern about or positive evaluation of an
integrated control of their impulses. They say they express themselves
freely and quickly. Their "psychological inertia" is very low, that is, very
few secondary processes intervene as a screen between underlying wish
and overt behavioural response. The yeasayers desire and actively search
for emotional excitement in their environment. Novelty, movement,
change, adventure — these provide the external stimuli for their emotional-
ism. They see the world as a stage where the main theme is 'acting out'
libidinal desires. In the same way, they seek and respond quickly to
internal stimuli: their inner impulses are allowed ready expression . . .
the yeasayer's general attitude is one of stimulus acceptance, by which we
mean a pervasive readiness to respond affirmatively or yield willingly to
both outer and inner forces demanding expression.

'The "disagreeing"naysayers have the opposite orientation. For them,
impulses are seen as forces requiring control, and perhaps in some
sense as threats to general personality stability. The naysayer wants to
maintain inner equilibrium; his secondary processes are extremely
impulsive and value maintaining forces. We might describe this as a state
of high psychological inertia — impulses undergo a series of delays,
censorships, and transformations before they are permitted expression.
Both internal and external stimuli that demand response are carefully
scrutinised and evaluated: these forces appear as unwelcome intruders
a subjective world of "classical" balance. Thus, as opposed to the
the naysayers' general attitude is one of stimulus rejection —
pervasive unwillingness to respond to impulsive or environmental
forces.' ('Yeasayers and Naysayers', Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, Vol. 160, No. 2, i960.)

4- My impro group used to set up a 'say "Yes" ' game using a tape

108 SPONTANEITY

recorder. We would record a one-sided dialogue, and then play the tape
during a show, and get an actor who did not know what was on the tape to
improvise with it. It means you have to accept the tape or fail totally,
since the tape can't adapt to you. One tape ran like this:

'Hallo. {Pause.) No, no, me, I'm down here. On the footpath. {Pause.)
I'm an ant. (Pause.) Pick me up, will you? (Pause.) Go careful. (Pause.)
We want to surrender. (Patue.) We're fed up with being stepped on,
bloody great things. Dictate your terms. (Pause.) Excuse me interrupting.
Can you see what I'm holding? (Pause.) Hold me up to your eye. (Pause).
Closer. (Pause.) Now. Pick up Willy. Put your hand down and he'll
climb on. Feel him. (Pause.) Put him on your shoulder. (Pause.) You
may feel him climbing up into your ear. What's that Willy? He says
there's a lot of wax here. (Pause.) Right now you may hear a son of
crinkling noise. (Pause.) That's Willy blowing up a paper bag. Any
trouble from you and he'll burst it against your eardrum. (Pause.) (Huge
explosion.) Do it again Willy, just to show him. (Explosion. Pause.) Well?
What have you got to say, ant-murderer? (Pause.) We'll talk later. Get
moving. Walk. Left, right, left, right . . .'

5. A Japanese text compares two actors who block each other to 'two
mantids eating each other. They fight with each other; if one puts out a
hand it is eaten off; if one puts out a leg, it is eaten off, so that it is natural
that in the end they destroy each other.' (The Actor's Analects, translated
by Charles J. Dunn and Bunzo Torigoe, Columbia University Press,
1969.)

A problem for the improviser is that the audience are likely to reward
blocking at the moment it first appears.
'Your name Smith?'
'No!'

(Laughter.)

They laugh because they enjoy seeing the actors frustrated, just as
they'll laugh if the actors start to joke. Jokey TV or radio programmes
usually stop for a song, or some animation, every few minutes. The
improviser, who is committed to performing for longer periods, gags or
blocks at his peril, although the immediacy of the audience's laughter is
likely to condition him to do just this. Once the performers have been
lured into gagging or blocking, the audience is already on the way towards
irritation and boredom. More than laughter they want action.

Narrative Skills

Playboy. Knife in the Water was an original, and unusual

screenplay. Where did you get the idea for it?
Polanski: It was the sum of several desires in me. I loved the
lake area in Poland and I thought it would make a
great setting for a film. I was thinking of a film with
a limited number of people in it as a form of
challenge. I hadn't ever seen a film with only three
characters, where no one else even appeared in the
background. The challenge was to make it in a way
that the audience wouldn't be aware of the fact that
no one else had appeared even in the background.
As for the idea, all I had in mind when I began the
script was a scene where two men were on a sailboat
and one fell overboard. But that was a starting-point,
wouldn't you agree?
Playboy: Certainly, but a strange one. Why were you thinking

about a man falling out of a sailboat?
Polanski : There you go, asking me how to shrink my head again.

I don't know why. I was interested in creating a mood,
an atmosphere, and after the film came out, a lot of
critics found all sorts of symbols and hidden
meanings in it that I hadn't even thought of. It
made me sick. (Playboy, December, 1971.)
I started my work on narrative by trying to make the improvisers
conscious of the implications of the scenes they played. I felt that an
artist ought to be 'committed', and that he should be held respon-
sible for the effects of his work— it seemed only common sense. I got
my students to analyse the content of Red Riding Hood and The
Sleeping Beauty and Moby Dick and The Birthday Party, but this made
them even more inhibited. I didn't realise that if the people who
lought up Red Riding Hood had been aware of the implications, then
ey might never have written the story. This was at a time when I
d no inspiration as a writer at all, but I didn't twig that the more I
tried to understand the 'real' meaning, the less I wrote. When Pinter

110 NARRATIVE SKILLS

directs his own plays he may say 'We may assume that what the
author intended here is . . .' — and this is a sensible attitude: the
playwright is one person and the director another, even when they
share the same skull.

When I ran the Royal Court's script department, I used to read
about fifty plays a week, and many of them seemed to betray their
author's conscious intention. At one time there was a glut of plays
about homosexual lovers whose happiness, or even lives, are destroyed
by the opposition of ignorant bigots. I didn't see these as pro-homo-
sexual although I'm sure their authors did. If I wrote such a play my
homosexuals would live happily ever after, just as my Goldilocks
would end up living in a commune with the bears. Recent films in
which the good lawman comes to grief when he tries to fight the
system ( Walking Tall, Serpico) have the moral 'Don't stick your neck
out', but this may not be what their directors intend. In the old days
the honest sheriff was triumphant; nowadays he's crippled, or dead.
Content lies in the structure, in what happens, not in what the characters
say.

Even at the level of geometrical signs 'meaning' is ambiguous. A
cross, a circle, and a swastika contain a 'content' quite apart from
those which we assign to them. The swastika is symmetrical but
unbalanced: it's a good sign for power, it has a clawiness about it
(cartoonists drew swastika spiders scrabbling over the face of Europe).
The circle is stiller, is a much better sign for eternity, for complete-
ness. The cross can stand for many things, for a meeting-place, for a
crossroads, for a kiss, for a reed reflected in a lake, for a mast, for a
sword — but it isn't meaningless just because the interpretations
aren't one-for-one. Whatever a cross suggests to us it won't have the
same associations as a circle, which makes a much better sign for a
moon, for example, or for pregnancy. Moby Dick may be a symbol
for the 'life-force', or for 'evil' and we can add anytb'ng it suggests to
us, but the area of legitimate association is limited, nere are things
the white whale doesn't symbolise, as well as things it does, and once
you start combining signs together in a narrative the whole thing
becomes too complex. A story is as difficult to interpret as a dream,
and the interpretation of a dream depends on who's doing the in-
terpreting. When King Lear really gets going — the mad King, the
man pretending to be mad, the fool paid to be mad, and the whole
mass of overlapping and contradictory associations — what can the
spectator sensibly do but be swept away on the flood, and experience
the play, instead of trying to think what it 'means'.

NARRATIVE SKILLS III
My decision was that content should be ignored. This wasn't a
conclusion I wished to reach, because it contradicted my political
thinking. I hadn't realised that every play makes a political statement,
and that the artist only needs to worry about content if he's trying to
fake up a personality he doesn't actually have, or to express views he
really isn't in accord with. I tell improvisers to follow the rules and
see what happens, and not to feel in any way responsible for the
material that emerges. If you improvise spontaneously in front of an
audience you have to accept that your innermost self will be revealed.
The same is true of any artist. If you want to write a 'working-class
play' then you'd better be working class. If you want your play to be
religious, then be religious. An artist has to accept what his imagination
gives him, or screw up his talent.

Alex Comfort once filmed some of my work, and he seemed surprised I
when I told him that my students never attacked me physically. He'd
been explaining that I was really operating as a therapist, that I was
coaxing students into areas that would normally be 'forbidden', and
that spontaneity means abandoning some of your defences.

I didn't have an answer at the time, except to say 'Well, they don't',
but my refusal to attribute any importance to content may be the
answer. If my students produce disturbing material I link it with
ideas of my own, or with something someone else has produced, and I
stop them feeling isolated or 'peculiar'. Whatever dredges up from
their unconscious I'll accept, and treat as 'normal'. If I seized on the
content of scenes as revealing secrets about the student, then I'd be
perceived as a threat. They'd have to 'love' me, or 'hate' me. I'd have
negative and positive transference states to contend with— which would
be a hindrance.

Once you decide to ignore content it becomes possible to under-
stand exactly what a narrative is, because you can concentrate on
structure.

My dictionary says a story is 'a sequence of events that have, or are
alleged to have happened, a series of events that are or might be nar-
rated ... a person's account of his life or some portion of it ... a
narrative of real or, more usually fictitious events, designed for the
entertainment of the hearer . . .' and so on. Even a small child knows
that a story isn't just a series of events, because he says 'And is that
the end?' If we say 'A story is a series of events that might be narrated'
then we beg the question, which is: 'Why do we narrate one series of
events but not another?'

I had to decide what a story was, and present a theory that an

112 NARRATIVE SKILLS

improviser could use on the spur of the moment in any situation.
Obviously, the 'seventeen basic plots' approach would be too hmiting.
I needed a way to handle anything that cropped up.

Suppose I make up a story about meeting a bear in the forest. It
chases me until I come to a lake. I leap into a boat and row across to an
island. On the island is a hut. In the hut is a beautiful girl spinning
golden thread. I make passionate love to the girl . . .

I am now 'storytelling' but I haven't told a story. Everyone knows
it isn't finished. I could continue forever in the same way: Next morn-
ing I am walking around the island when an eagle seizes me and
carries me high into the sky. I land on a cloud and find a path leading
to Heaven. To one side of the path I notice a lake with three swans.
One of the swans suddenly disappears, and an old man stands in his
place . . .

The trouble with such a sequence is that there's no place where it
can stop, or rather, that it can stop anywhere; you are unconsciously
waiting for another activity to start, not free association, but re-
incorporation.

Let's begin the story again: I escape from a bear by rowing across to
an island. Inside a hut on the island is a beautiful girl bathing in a
wooden tub. I'm making passionate love to her when I happen to
glance out of the window. If I now see the bear rowing across in a
second boat, then there was some point in mentioning him in the
first place. If the girl screams 'My lover!' and hides me under the bed,
then this is better storytelling, since I've not only reintroduced the
bear, but I've also linked him to the girl. The bear enters the hut,
unzips his skin, and emerges as the grey old man who makes love to
the girl. I creep out of the hut taking the skin with me so that he can't
change back into a bear. I run down to the shore and row back to the
mainland, towing the second boat behind me (reintroducing the
boats). Then I see the old man paddling after me in the tub. He seems
incredibly strong and there's no escape from him. I wait for him
among the trees, and pull the bearskin around myself. I become a
bear and tear him to pieces — thus I've reincorporated both the man
and the skin. I row back to the island and find the girl has vanished.
The hut has become very old and the roof is sagging in, and trees that
were young saplings are now very tall. Then I try to remove the skin
and I find it's sealed up around me.

At this point a child would probably say 'And is that the end?'
because clearly some sort of pattern has been completed. Yet at no
time have I thought about the content of the scene. I presume it's

NARRATIVE SKILLS II3
about sexual anxieties and fear of old age, or whatever. Had I 'known'
this, then I wouldn't have constructed that particular story, but as
usual the content has looked after itself, and anyway is only of interest
to critics or psychologists. What matters to me is the ease with which
I 'free-associate' and the skill with which I reincorporate.

Here's a 'good night' story made up by me and Dorcas (age six).

'What do you want a story about?' I asked.

'A little bird,' she said.

'That's right. And where did this little bird live?'
'With Mummy and Daddy bird.'

'Mummy and Daddy looked out of the nest one day and saw a man
coming through the trees. What did he have in his hand?'
'An axe.'

'And he took the axe and started chopping down all the trees with
a white mark on. So Daddy bird flew out of the nest, and do you know
what he saw on the bark of his tree?'

'A white mark.'

'Which meant?'

'The man was going to cut down their tree.'

'So the birds all flew down to the river. Who did they meet?'

'Mr Elephant.'

'Yes. And Mr Elephant filled his trunk with water and washed the
white mark away from the tree. And what did he do with the water
left in his trunk?'

'He squirted it over the man.'

'That's right. And he chased the man right out of the forest and the
man never came back.'

'And is that the end of the story?'
'It is.'

At the age of six she has a better understanding of storytelling than
many university students. She links the man to the birds by giving
him an axe. She links up the water left in the trunk with the wood-
cutter, whom she remembers we'd shelved. She isn't concerned with
content but any narrative will have some (about insecurity, I sup-
pose).

I say to an actress, 'Make up a story.' She looks desperate, and says,
T can't think of one.'

'Any story,' I say. 'Make up a silly one.'
'I can't,' she despairs.

'Suppose I think of one and you guess what it is.'

At once she relaxes, and it's obvious how very tense she was.

114 NARRATIVE SKILLS

'I've thought of one,' I say, but I'll only answer "Yes", "No", or
"Maybe".'

She likes this idea and agrees, having no idea that I'm planning to
say 'Yes' to any question that ends in a vowel, 'No' to any question
that ends in a consonant, and 'Maybe' to any question that ends with
the lener 'Y'.

For example, should she ask me 'Is it about a horse?' I'll answer
'Yes' since 'horse' ends in an 'E'.
'Does the horse have a bad le£?'
'No.'

'Does it run awa^?'
'Maybe . . .'

She can now invent a story easily, but she doesn't feel obliged to be
'creative', or 'sensitive' or whatever, because she believes the story is
my invention. She no longer feels wary, and open to hostile criticism,
as of course we all are in this culture whenever we do anything
spontaneously. Her first question is:

'Has the story got any people in it?'

'No.'

'Has it got animals in it?'
'No.'

'Has it got buildings in it?'

'Yes.' (I'm having to drop my rule about consonants, or she'd get
too discouraged.)
'Does the building have anything to do with the story?'
'Maybe.'

'Does it have aeroplanes in it?'

'No.'

'Fish?'

'No.'

'Insects?'

'Yes.'

'Do the insects play a large part in the story?'
'Maybe.'

'Do they live underground?'
'No.'

'Do they start out as harmless?'
'No.'

'Do the insects take over the world?'
'Yes.'

'Are they as big as elephants?'

NARRATIVE SKILLS 115

'No.'

'Do they take any poison?'
'No!'

'Is it a gradual process, this taking over of the world?'
'No.'

'Were there many insects?'
'No.'

'Do the insects gain anything by destroying the world?'
'Yes.'

'Do they reign utterly alone?'
'Yes.'

'Do they destroy the world in a foul manner?'
'No.'

'Does the story begin with their existing?'
'No.'

'But there aren't any people in this bloody story. So it must start
with the insects. Have the insects been reigning alone in the world for
a long time?'

'Yes.'

'Do they live in the buildings that used to be the people's buildings?'
'Yes.'

'And then they suddenly decide to destroy the world?'
♦Yes.'

'And they don't die. And when they eat everything in sight they
become larger?'
'Yes.'

'And then they can't fit into the buildings again?'
'Yes.'

'And is that the end of the story?'
'It is.'

If she got more than two 'Nos' in a row I sometimes said 'Yes' to
encourage her, and in the end I said 'yes' all the time because she was
getting discouraged. We used to play this game at parties, and people
who claim to be unimaginative would think up the most astounding
stories, so long as they remained convinced that they weren't re-
sponsible for them. The great joke was to lure somebody into inventing
a story about a midget dentist sexually assaulting Siamese twins, or
whatever, wait until he accused you of having really perverted minds,
and then explain triumphantly that he had created the story himself.
Faubion Bowers once wrote an article on this game, in, I think,
Playboy.

Il6 NARRATIVE SKILLS

To some extent such stories are due to chance, but you can see in
the last example that a story is struggling to get out. She doesn't ask
'Are the insects harmless?', she says 'Do they start out as harmless?'
so that you know she has the intention of creating some destructive
force. She also wants them to be big. She says 'Are they as big as
elephants?' and gets the answer 'No', but she still ends up getting them
gigantic, since they eat so much that they can't fit into the buildings.
She's been lured into constructing one of the basic myths of our culture,
the apparently harmless force that destroys the environment — and
itself. Notice how she shapes the story by recapitulation. She links
the buildings and the insects, and she reintroduces the buildings again
at the end. She says, 'Is that the end?' because she knows she's linked
up the story. It must be obvious that when someone insists that they
'can't think up a story', they really mean that they 'won't think up a
story'— which is OK by me, so long as they understand it's a refusal,
rather than a 'lack of talent'.

2

The improviser has to be like a man walking back-
wards. He sees where he has been, but he pays no attention to the
future. His story can take him anywhere, but he must still 'balance' it,
and give it shape, by remembering incidents that have been shelved
and reincorporating them. Very often an audience will applaud when
earlier material is brought back into the story. They couldn't tell you
why they applaud, but the reincorporation does give them pleasure.
Sometimes they even cheer! They admire the improviser's grasp,
since he not only generates new material, but remembers and makes
use of earlier events that the audience itself may have temporarily
forgotten.

It seems obvious to teach storytelling as two separate activities. I
get the actors to work in pairs, with Actor A telling a story for thirty
seconds, and then with Actor B finishing it for thirty seconds. Actor A
is to provide disconnected material, and Actor B is somehow to con-
nect it.

A : It was a cold winter's night. The wolves howled in
the trees. The concert pianist adjusted his sleeves
and began to play. An old lady was shovelling snow
from her door . . .

B : . . . When she heard the piano the little old lady
began shovelling at fantastic speed. When she

NARRATIVE SKILLS II7
reached the concert hall she cried, 'That pianist is
my son!' Wolves appeared at all the windows, and
the pianist sprang on to the piano, thick fur growing
visibly from under his clothes.

Or again:

A : An old lady sits in her lighthouse very worried
because the sea has dried up and there are no ships
for her light to warn. In the middle of the desert a
tap has been dripping since the beginning of time.
In the heart of the jungle, in a little hut, an old
man sits cross-legged . . .

B: . . . 'I can't stand that dripping sound,' he cries,
leaping up and making a great journey to the centre
of the desert. Nothing he can do will stop the tap
dripping. 'At least I can turn it on,' he cries.
Immediately the desert flourishes, the seas fill up
again, and the old lady is very happy. She travels to
the jungle to thank the old man, and ever afterwards
keeps a picture of him and his hut above the
mantelpiece in the lighthouse.

And again:

A: A man sits in a cave surrounded by pieces of
bicycles. There is a fire outside the cave, and a
woman is sending up smoke signals. Some children
are playing in the river. An aeroplane passes over
the valley and breaks the sound barrier . . .

B : . . . The sonic boom makes the children look up.
They see the smoke signals. 'Daddy mended the
bicycles,' they shout. When they run back to the
cave a strange sight meets their eyes: not bicycles,
but a flying-machine made out of all the pieces.
Leaping on, they all pedal into the air, and fly
around the valley all day.
Sometimes Actor A will try to make it 'easy' for Actor B. This
actually makes it more difficult.

A : There was a little old lady in Putney who ran a
fish-and-cbip shop. All the people liked her,
especially the local cats, because she used to give
them scraps of fish. Also she didn't charge much,
not to poor people, so they saved up and bought
her a birthday present . . .

a

t

Il8 NARRATIVE SKILLS

B: There's nothing for me to do. She's joined it all up
herself.
Me: True!

I'm not saying that this method produces great literature, but you
can get people inventing stories who previously claimed they could
never think of any.

Once people have learned to play each stage of this game with no
effort or anxiety, I let them play both halves themselves. I say 'Free-
associate', and then when they've produced unconnected material,
fl say 'Connect', or 'Reincorporate'.

A knowledge of this game is very useful to a writer. First of all it
' encourages you to write whatever you feel like; it also means that you
look bac/i v/hcn you get stuck, instead of searching forwar ds. You look
for things you've shelved, and then reinclude them.

If I want people to free-associate, then I have to create an environ-
ment in which they aren't going to be punished, or in any way held
responsible for the things their imagination gives them. I devise
techniques for taking the responsibility away from the personality.
Some of these games are very enjoyable and others, at first encounter,
are rather frightening; people who play them alter their view of
themselves. I protect the students, encourage them and reassure them
that they'll come to no harm, and then coax them or trick them into
letting the imagination off its leash.

One way to bypass the censor who holds our spontaneity in check
is to distract him, or overload him. I might ask someone to write out a
paragraph on paper (without premeditation) while counting back-
wards aloud from a hundred. I'll try it now as I'm typing:
/ 'Extra. I fall through the first storey of the car park. The driver
throughout the night thought the soft concrete slit his genitals
! thoughtfully. Nurse Grimshaw fell further . . .'

I got to sixty until I felt my brain was going to explode. It's like
trying to write after a severe concussion. Try it. It's very surprising to
see what something in you 'wants' to write when it gets the chance.

You might try drawing a picture with two hands at once. The trick
is to keep your attention equally divided, rather than switching quickly
from hand to hand. Also you shouldn't decide what to draw; just sit
down with a blank mind and draw as quickly as possible. This re-
gresses your mind to about five years of age. Curiously, each hand
seems to draw with the same level of s

NARRATIVE SKILLS 119

3

Lists

If I tell a student, 'Say a word', he'll probably gawp.
He wants a context in which his answer will be 'right'. He wants his
answer to bring credit to him, that's what he's been taught answers
are for.

'Why can't you just say whatever comes into your head?'

'Yes, well, I don't want to speak nonsense.'

'Any word would have done. A spontaneous reply is never non-
sense.' This puzzles him.

'All right,' I say, 'just name me a list of objects, but as quick as you
can.'

'Er . . . cat, dog, mouse, trap, dark cellar . . .'

He trails off, because he feels that the list is somehow revealing
something about himself. He wants to keep his defences up. When
you act or speak spontaneously, you reveal your real self, as opposed
to the self you've been trained to present.

Nonsense results from a scrambling process, and takes time. You
have to consider your thought, decide whether it gives you away, and
then distort it, or replace it with something else. The student's 'trap'
and 'dark cellar' were threatening to release some anxiety in him. If
he'd continued with the list, speaking as quickly as possible, he'd
have revealed himself as not quite so sane and secure as he pretends.
I'll try typing out some nonsense as fast as I can and see what I get.

'The lobster bites the foot. Freda leaps skyward, back falling
prone on to the long breakwater. Archie Pellingoe the geologist
leaping up around down and upon her lovingly chews her alabaster
sandwich . . .'

This is still partly scrambled, because I can't type quickly enough.
I managed to censor some of it, but I wasn't able to remove all the
sexual content. I veered away from the lobster suspecting the image
to be vaguely erotic, but it got worse. The only way I could have
made it meaningless would be to type more slowly, and to substitute
other images. This is what my students do all the time. I ask them for
an idea and they say '. . . oh . . . aahh . . . um . . .' as if they couldn't
think of one. The brain constructs the universe for us, so how is it
possible to be 'stuck' for an idea? The student hesitates not because
he doesn't have an idea, but to conceal the inappropriate ones that
arrive uninvited.

120 NARRATIVE SKILLS

I make my students improvise lists of objects to make them under-
stand that there are two processes they can use. You can make
rational jumps from one object to the next: 'Dog, cat, milk, saucer,
spoon, fork . . .' or you can improvise a non-associative list. I'll type
out one as quickly as I can. 'Duck, rhomboid, platypus, elephant's egg,
cactus, Johnnie Ray, clock face, East Acton . . .' It's like emptying all
sorts of garbage from your mind that you didn't know was there.
Try it. It's more difficult than you think, but it stops people caring
what comes out of their minds. I'll try again. 'Dead nun, postbox,
car-o-nine-tails, cement hopper, mouse-juice, Pope Urban the Eighth,
a blob, giant opera singer, piece of lettuce, a kazoo, a vivisected
clown, a lump of interstellar dust, limpet shell, moving lava, red
minibus, stamen, sickle-cell anaemia . . .'

A sequential list feels like one you 'think up'. A non-sequential
list seems to arrive by itself. One day I'm sure there'll be an explana-
tion for the two processes. Students choose the first way, and have
to be coaxed into attempting the second. They feel as if they're
being bombarded with the thoughts of someone else. They can't
understand why such bizarre lists should occur to them. I tell them
that it's perfectly natural, and that hypnagogic images come in the
same way.

Associating Images

One of the earliest games we played at the studio
involved associating images. We developed it from word-association
games and we found that if someone gives an image suddenly, this will
automatically trigger off another image in his partner's mind. Some-
one says 'A lobster . . .' and someone answers 'With a flower in its
claw', and the juxtaposition does imply a content: 'A torn photo-
graph ...''... An empty room'; 'Basket of eggs Cement
mixer'. Afterwards you can see that a lobster with a flower in its claw
is a good symbol of insensitivity, for someone locked out of the world
of feeling, and so on, yet none of these associations were conscious at
the moment that the pairing image jerked out.

Here's some genuine nonsense assembled by C. E. Shannon and
based on word-probabilities :

'The head and frontal attack on an English writer that the character
of this point is therefore another method for the letters that the time
of whoever told the problem for an unexpected . . .' and so on. This is
not the sort of thing spewed out by the unconscious.

NARRATIVE SKILLS 121

'Characters'

One way to trigger off narrative material is to put the
students in groups of three, and have them invent a name for a char-
acter, and see if they can agree on what he's like. For example:

'Betty Plum.'

'Big breasts.'

'Yes. A barmaid.'

'Er . . .*

'Well, she has worked as a barmaid . . *
'Yes.'

'Lives in a room with blue curtains.'
'A stuffed toy dog on the dresser . . .'
'Which she keeps her nightdress in.'
'Nylon.'

The group continue until they know who she lives with, her taste
in music, her secret ambition, the sorrow in her life, etc. The import-
ant thing is that the students should really agree, they shouldn't just
make compromises. As soon as one person disagrees they wipe the
character out, and start on another. Soon they learn to develop a
character much further, and in a way that satisfies all of them.
'George Honeywell — keeps bees — smokes a pipe — married — was
married— in love with the daughter of the tobacconist— wears a
soft cap— he's a voyeur— likes dogs . . .' And so on.

Automatic Writing

Automatic writing is one way of getting students to
understand that there is 'something inside them besides themselves'.
Normally this skill is rare, but I have invented a method that works
for most people ; actually I suppose I should call it 'automatic reading'.
Here's how I coaxed a poem from a volunteer at a public lecture.

'Mime taking a book from a shelf,' I said.

'Yes.'

'What colour is it?'
'Blue.'

'Did you have to think up the colour or did you see it?'
Tt was blue.'

'Open it at the flyleaf. Can you see the name of the publisher?'
'It's faint.'
'Spell it.'

'H . . . o . . . d . . . Hodson.'
'And the name of the book?'

122 NARRATIVE SKILLS

7* . . .'
'Yes.'
'The . . .'

'Yes ... try to spell it.'
'C . . . country.'
'In the Country . . . author?'
'Alex . . . ander Pope.'

'Open it till you come to a page of verse. What's the page number?'

"Thirty-nine.'

'Find me a line of verse.'

'So that we . . .'

'Are you seeing it or inventing it?'
'Seeing it.'
'Next word.'
'It's blurred.'

'I've given you a magnifying-glass . . .'

I continued drawing the poem out of her, until she'd 'read' two
verses. Then I stopped because she was finding the experience
frightening. So did the audience, because it really didn't seem to be a
poem she was inventing, yet someone was inventing it.

So that we can be happy

Together in our loves

Since you were away

I have been alone.

Having been so close
I cannot live again
Many years will pass
Till I live again.

The personality will often try to resist this method by saying 'It's in
Russian', or 'It's too tiny to read the print', and so on. I say 'There's
something written in English in the margin' or 'I'm shrinking you
down to the size of the book', or something suitable. It's easy to
switch from 'automatic reading' to my form of 'automatic writing'.
You just look at a blank sheet of paper, and 'see' a word, and then
write it where you 'saw' it. I've filled many exercise books using this
method, partly to see where it led me, and partly to know what hap-
pens if you go past the point where you feel impelled to stop. I've
learned a lot about myself this way. Again there's a great gap between
what I would choose to write, and what actually emerges. Here's a bit
that sounds like a statement about the imagination.

NARRATIVE SKILLS 123
The great dragon dare not stir
The trainer watches kindly but
At the slightest movement taps it on the nose
The eyes glint fire and yet the muscles dare
Not exert themselves nor let the flame burst forth
Which would engulf the city in one flash.
The trainer speaks of kindness and consoles
And says he is the dragon's only friend
Sometimes the dragon purrs but oh the pain
Of never moving those enormous limbs.

Here's another one, not at all like 'my' writing.

Windmills

The vanes split apart

All the mechanism rusts
Growing children talk
Words turn to dust.

Look where the ocean

Clogged with oil stands
Still struggling seabird
Below on black sand.

Where on the headland

Does a lighthouse blaze now?
The endless waves mount
Desire fails below.

'Dreams'

A game we got from America uses relaxation to bypass
the censor. It's used by psychologists, and I've seen dire warnings
about other people using it. Most psychologists who use games rely
very heavily on the discoveries of people working in the theatre, and
my guess is that the 'guided dream' came from the theatre in the first
place. (Frederick Perls says he was once a pupil of Max Reinhardt !)
Anyway, I think the warnings are due to the same kind of fear that
Mask work and hypnosis inspire. It's true that if someone is hovering
on the edge of insanity one little push may topple him over, but a bus
trip can be just as disturbing as anything that happens in a theatre class.

If I get you to lie down, close your eyes and relax, and report what
your imagination gives you, then you'll probably go into a deep

124 NARRATIVE SKILLS

state of absorption, and instead of 'thinking things up' the experiences
will seem to be really happening to you. Afterwards, if I ask 'Did you
feel the floor?' then you'U probably say, 'There wasn't any floor.' If I
say, 'Did you experience your body?' you'll probably answer, 'I wasn't
in my body' or 'I was in the body I had in the story.'

I begin by suggesting something like 'You're on a beach?'

'Yes.'

'Is it sandy or stony?'
•Sandy.'

'Did you think that up?'
'No, I just knew.'

It's very likely that the student will want to stay on the beach and
not be moved. I ask if he can see anything, or anyone, but he'll usually
be alone. I tell him he's lain on the beach a long time, and then I
suggest that he moves to the water, or away from it. If I don't tell him
he's been there a long time, he'U probably refuse to 'get up'. The sort
of story I'll expect to get may involve him walking along the shore,
passing a cave. I may suggest he looks in the cave, or wades into the
ocean, but probably he'll prefer to go on walking. Maybe he walks up
to the top of the cliffs and looks down. Then I stop him.

Most people will have a good experience with this game, and
sometimes it's like paradise. It can also be pretty hellish. I watch
their breathing, and if they seem alarmed I take them out, or steer
them towards something less alarming. I coax them near to threaten-
ing areas: I'll suggest they enter the cave or swim in the ocean, but I
won't push them.

Once the basic technique is mastered, I let students try it again.
This time they'll be bolder. They'll encounter other people, they'll
have adventures, but I'll still guide them away from 'bad trips'. I'm
using the game to demonstrate to the student that he can be effortlessly
creative, not to teach him that his imagination is terrifying and
should be suppressed! People can get upset playing the game, but if
they weep you can cuddle them, which makes them feel better. When
people abreact I always establish that (i) it's good for them; (2)
they'll feel marvellous in half an hour; (3) it 'happens to everybody'.

Advanced students, whom you know well, may want to set off on
deeper and more fearful journeys. That's all right when they know
what they're doing. One way is to have them cuddled by other
students while they play the game. If they start to express great alarm,
take them out, be calm, tell them to open their eyes, rock them if
necessary. Two people can go on a journey together, each trying to

NARRATIVE SKILLS 125
have the same fantasy. The essential thing is not that the student
should abreact, but that he should have the experience of imagining
something 'effortlessly', and 'choicelessly'. He should understand
through this game that he doesn't have to do anything in order to
imagine, any more than he needs to do anything in order to relax or
perceive.

Here's a dream in which I was the questioner, and the 'victim' a
drama student.
'What sort of stories do you like?'

'Science fiction. Well . . . Tolkien. Stories like The Hobbit.'

'OK. Imagine a lake surrounded by mountains.'

'Yes.'

'You are swimming in the lake.'
'Yes.'

'Can you see any fish?'
'Yes.'

'Large ones?'
'No.'

'Shoals of little ones turning and darting?'
'Yes.'

'There is one particular fish. What do you do with it?'
'I catch it.'

'You swim back to the shore and three hooded figures are waiting
for you. What do you give them?'
•The fish.'

'And what do they give you in exchange?'
'A stick.'

'What do you do with it?'

T point it at an oak tree and it vanishes.'

'And then?'

'I point it at the three hooded figures and they vanish too.'

'You set out through the woods. Does the path lead up or down?'

'Up.'

'What do you hear? Is it from your right or your left?'
'Left. Someone crying.'

'You look down into a clearing and see a woman surrounded by . . .?'
'Little men.'

'What's she wearing? Anything?'

'She's naked.'

'The little men see you?'

'They're coming at me waving sticks.'

126 NARRATIVE SKILLS

'The woman calls to them?'

'She says it's not me who did it.'

'Was it someone from the castle?'

'Yes, he threw her out naked into the forest.'

'Do you help her?'

'Yes.'

'Do you go up the path?'

'I put my cloak round her and we set off to the castle.'

'It gets dark?'

'Yes.'

'And you are going to sleep?'

'We cover ourselves with leaves and we he about eight feet apart.'
'You're fast asleep when you wake up to feel her touching you.'
'Yes.'

'What's she after?'
'The stick.'
'Does she get it?"
'Yes.'

'She points it at you and what happens?'
'It goes all grey and wintry.'
'What do you see in the mist?'

'A huge oak tree, and three hooded figures leaping about and
shouting.'

At this point the story has obviously ended (because of a brilliant
reincorporation), and we roll about on the floor roaring with laughter.
We're very pleased to have co-operated so effortlessly.

You'll notice that my suggestions are mostly in the form of quest-
ions. He said 'Yes' to most of them, because we had a good rapport,
and I knew what to ask. Such 'dreams' are intensely real to the person
lying down, and pretty vivid to the questioner. This happened years
ago, but I still have the 'vision' of the story sharp in my mind. I
could easily draw illustrations to every part of it. To be a good
questioner you have to enter something like the same trance state as
the person answering.

'Experts'

When Vahktangov, one of Stanislavsky's favourite
pupils, was directing Turandot he asked the wise men to set them-
selves impossible problems. When they were onstage they were
always to be secretly trying to solve problems like 'How do you make
a fly the size of an elephant?'

NARRATIVE SKILLS 127
I adapted this idea to use in 'interviews'. One actor plays a TV
interviewer, and his partner becomes an 'expert' who has to convince
us that he's an authority on his subject.

The best way to think up the questions is to start a sentence
without knowing how it's going to end. You say: 'Good evening . . .
We are fortunate enough to have Professor Trout in the studio with
us, who has just returned from Africa where he has been teaching
hippopotamuses to . . .' You have no idea what to say next, but almost
anything will do : '. . . to do handstands' or '. . . to yodel'. If you try to
'think up' impossible questions, it's very difficult. Once you start the
sentence 'How do you turn a pig into . . .' it's very easy to conclude it
'. . . a fire station'.

If you are asked, 'How do you teach hippopotamuses to knit?' you
are likely to hedge : 'Well now, we have, as you know, a large number
of these hippopotamuses which the Government has assembled in the
hope that they will eventually boost Kenya's export trade. We're
hoping to sell about ten thousand pullovers a year soon.' You waffle
on like that, hoping that a nice idea will occur to you, but this isn't a
good way of really amazing an audience. It's much better to give any
answer. The interviewer's job is to hold the 'expert' to the problem of
answering.

'Yes, but how exactly did you teach them?'
'It was the carrot and the whip really.'
'But what techniques?'

The 'expert' has agreed to answer the problem as part of the game,
and he understands that the interviewer is trying to help him in
demanding an immediate answer. Once he 'jumps in', and stops hedg-
ing, the game is simple.

"Well, I demonstrated the stitches. Then I gave them sharpened
telegraph poles and about a mile of barbed wire.'

'Didn't they have trouble holding onto the poles?'

'Yes, well they would. They lack the opposed thumb. They do have
quite good co-ordination though, and are very suited to activities of a
repetitive nature.'

'But how exactly did they hold the poles?'

'Ah! Leather pole-holders strapped on to the forearms, or, er, in
common parlance, feet.'

'But the pullovers, weren't they rather uncomfortable?'

'Terrible. We were starting with barbed wire and telegraph poles
just to give them the general idea. If you try with wool right away,
they keep snapping it.'

128 NARRATIVE SKILLS
'Quite.'

'It's all a matter of grading. You get 'em on to rope, and then
string, and finally they'll be doing crochet.'
'Do you have any examples of their work?'

'I'm wearing it. Every article of my clothing was knitted by the
Kilimanjaro Hippo Co-operative.' (And so on.)

It's a little difficult on the printed page to show how pleasurable
the game is. It's not so much what is said, but the expert's eagerness
to supply instant answers. The audience know that they'd hedge, and
beat about the bush, and they have a great respect for a performer who
doesn't try any evasions. Sometimes such interviews are hysterically
funny. It's very good if the interviewer refers to 'charts' that he
imagines on the wall, and asks the 'expert' to explain them, or if the
activity can be demonstrated. If you've been teaching mushrooms to
yodel, the interviewer can say, 'I believe you've brought some of your
soloists with you this evening.' Anyone from the audience would
hastily deny this. It's so nice when the expert says 'Yes' and calls
them in, or mimes taking them out of his pocket.

'Verbal Chase'

Students can become better at playing 'Experts' if they
play a 'verbal chase' game first.

For example : Suppose I say 'Imagine a box.' A student can predict
that the next thing I will say is something like 'What's in it?' Instead
I say 'Who put you in there?' 'My father,' he says, anticipating a
further question like 'Why did he put you there?' Instead I say 'What
have you got in there with you?'. He replies 'A toilet'. I don't know
what he anticipates now, but certainly not what I do say, which is
'What's written on the outside of the box?' 'Ladies!' he says, col-
lapsing with laughter.

We all laugh, I suppose because of the implied homosexuality. If
I were to point this out, then the student would feel the need to
guard against me. Instead, I ignore the content, and concentrate on
trying to jerk the answers out of the student as quickly as possible.

I say to another student: 'You're in a street. What street are you

in?'
'Main street.'
'What's the shop?'
'A fishmonger's.'

'What does the fishmonger point at you?'
'A pistol.'

NARRATIVE SKILLS 129

'What comes out?'
'Vinegar.'

Again everyone laughs and is very pleased. Answering such
questions is easy. Asking them is very difficult, because you have to
change the 'set' of the questions each time. Here's a sequence re-
corded in connection with a TV show. I was working with a girl
student I'd just met for the first time.

'Where are you?'

'Here!'

'You're not. Where are you?'
'In a box.'

'Who put you there?'
'Mummy.'

'She's not really your mummy. Who is she?'

'She's my aunt.'

'What's her secret plan?'

'To kill me.'

'What with?'

'A knife.'

'She sticks the knife where?'

This question freaks her, because it's so sexual.

'In ... in ... in my stomach.'

'She cuts it open and takes out a handful of papery . .
'Boxes.'

'On the boxes is written . . .?'
' "Help!" '
'Who wrote it?'
'I did.'

'Who's in the box? Crawling out?'
'A spider.'

'A spider marked . . .?'
' "YES".'

'The spider does what?'
'It eats me.'

'Inside the spider you meet?"

'My father.'

'Holding?'

'A ... a ... a .. . elephant.'

'By the . . .'

'Tail.'

Everyone falls about with laughter, as if we'd been telling jokes,

130 NARRATIVE SKILLS

and they understand that some sort of sequence has come to an end.
A student who becomes an expert questioner, that is, who becomes
very ingenious at changing the 'set' of the questions, becomes a better
improviser. Speed is important, so that the questions and answers are a
little too fast for 'normal' thought.

Some questioners start doing all the work. For example:

'You're walking along a road.'

'Yes.'

'You meet a giant.'
'Yes.'

'You fall into a pool and are eaten by crocodiles.'
'Yes.*

*&...«...'

This could be rephrased, and would then work.
'You're walking along — what?'
'A road.'

'A giant does what to you?'
'Throws me into a pond.'
'What do the crocodiles bite?'

The more 'insane' the questions, the better in jerking spontaneous
answers from the 'victim'.

'Word at a Time'

If I ask someone to invent the first line of a short
story, he'll unconsciously rephrase the question. He'll tense up, and
probably say 'I can't think of one.' He'll really act as if he's been asked
for a good first line. Any first line is really as good as any other, but the
student imagines that he's being asked to think up dozens of first
lines, then imagine the type of stories they might give rise to, and then
assess the stories to find the best one. This is why he looks appalled and
mumbles '. . . oh . . . dor . . . um . . .'

Even if I ask some people for the first word of a short story they'll
panic and claim that they 'can't think of one', which is really amazing.
The question baffles them because they can't see how to use it to
display their 'originality' ... A word like 'the' or 'once' isn't good
enough for them.

If I ask one student for the first word of a story, and another for the
second word, and another for the third word, and so on, then we
could compose a story in this way:

'There' . . . 'was' ... 'a' ... 'man' . . . 'who' . . . 'loved' . . .
'making' . . . 'people' . . . 'happy'.

NARRATIVE SKILLS 131

One version of the game— which I still play occasionally— involved
telling a story around a circle as quickly as possible. Sometimes we
did it to a beat. Anyone who 'blocked' we threw out until only two
people were left. You can make the game tougher by having each
person who speaks point to the person who is to say the next word,
there's no way to anticipate when your turn will come.

Anyone who tries to control the future of the story can only suc-
ceed in ruining it. Every time you add a word, you know what word
you would like to follow. Unless you can continually wipe your ideas
out of your mind you're paralysed. You can't adapt to the words said
by other people.

'We . . . (went for a walk) . . .'

'Are . . . (nice people) . . .'

'Going ... (to the circus) . . .'

'Away . . . (for a holiday) . . .'

'To . . . (the country) . . .'

'Explore . . . (the Amazon) . . .'

'A . . . (cave) . . .'

'Giant!'

Once you say whatever comes to mind, then it's as if the story is
being told by some outside force. I wouldn't be surprised to find that
there are cultures which use the method as a form of divination. The
group learn that this method of storytelling won't work unless they
relax, stop worrying about being 'obvious' and remain attentive. I have
played it in darkened rooms with the group lying on their backs with
their heads at the centre of a circle. I remember at RADA we once
pulled curtains over ourselves and lay there like a huge pudding.
After the group has played the game with their eyes shut, get them to
walk about and observe any perceptual changes. (Colours become
brighter, people and spaces seem of a different size, focus is sharper.)
Our normal thinking dulls perception, but the word-at-a-time game
can shut some of the normal screening off. (It's not a good game for
German speakers because of the rules about verbs coming at the
end!)

I divide students into groups of four and get them to compose
'letters' a word at a time. They all relax and one of the players writes
the letter down. I was describing this technique to an Eng. Lit.
graduate.

'I don't think I could ever learn such a game,' she said
'Try it,' I said, and wrote '89' at the top of a sheet of paper.
'What's that?' she asked.

132 NARRATIVE SKILLS

'The beginning of the address.'
'I don't know what to put.'

This intelligent girl was suffering. She was claiming to be 'un-
creative' but was really just terrified she'd give something away.
'You know how addresses start on letters.'
'Well . . . all right. "The".'
'Elms', I wrote.

'89 The Elms can't be an address.'
'It'll do.'

'I can't think of anything else. I've got a block.'
I wrote 'block' down. Then I wrote 'Jan'.
'March' she said, looking helpful.

I put an oblique stroke between 'Jan' and 'March'. She looked as
if she was under great stress. She wanted to fail but didn't know how
to. She was afraid that the game might make her reveal secret things
about herself.

'Dear', I wrote.

'Henry', she said after a long pause.
'I.'

'Hope.'
'Mrs.'

'I don't know who to put.'

'Any name. There isn't any way to choose a name that's wrong.'
'Exeter', she said, and seemed suddenly to realise that the game
could be fun. The completed 'letter' read like this:

89 The Elms Block
Jan/March

Dear Henry,

I hope Mrs Exeter has been behaving well. Mum hopes that
you will take off your bra. You will not proceed to any other
perversions. The Vicar says Mrs White is a cow. Do you allow
Mrs White to help you go to the bathroom?

Yours sincerely,
Arthur

PS I hate you.

Not an inspired letter, but once she got over her initial resistance
she became fascinated by the game, and played it many times.

Word-at-a-time letters usually go through four stages: (1) the
letters are usually cautious or nonsensical and full of concealed sexual
references ; (2) the letters are obscene and psychotic ; (3) they are full

NARRATIVE SKILLS 133
of religious feeling; (4) finally, they express vulnerability and loneli-
ness.

Improvisations go through similar stages if you don't censor them,
and if you work with the same group day after day. Here is a sequence
of 'letters' which were written late one night, by three drama students
(two boys and a girl). They said it took them a couple of hours, what
with talking, and opening more beers, and so on. I'd told them that
the stories changed if they persisted in writing them, but I hadn't told
them what to expect. They stopped when they were too scared to
write any more. You can see the 'armour' peeling off letter by letter.
Some of the paragraphs have titles, which I think were arrived at by
spelling them out a letter at a time.

1. 'How did he walk on the water when it was raining? I don't think
that God exists (in garbage cans). Polacks began to fix their dynamite
to the end of their tools which shuddered and vibrated radically.
"John is a prick," said Mary, "why can't he fuck my arse, the bastard !"
Jeremy and Fiona lay in a compromising position with green and
yellow forceps plucking their pubic hair which rustled like rccds in a
storm which was raging then. Tomorrow we must go with Jane to old
mansions and buy all the paraphernalia required for our happy trans-
actions in the nuptial bed. Why did Mary pull Jeremy's trousers off
his legs and burn with green fingers? She stroked his beard and began
fondling his nosebag. It began to get warm in the greenhouse, plants
wilted and dctumesced. If the rain couldn't get into the trough all the
plants would die. How will Mother walk when it begins raining?'

2. 'Because Mary felt ill, she went to the doctors. Did he feel
reluctant to examine her? She couldn't pass water and fart when
asked. "You may leave the basin on the table if water is spilling down
your legs." I thought that we can perhaps catch ourselves in bed.
Basins frighten ghosts and mice, but spiders walk around chairs and
breathe softly. Can I hear myself breathe? Only God can produce
Christ's image on church walls without seeming to characterise. If
water falls gently on to the spider it will die. Tomorrow is Christ's
birthday and we must celebrate with balloons and razors. Should we
allow Christ to die? Perhaps he can save us, perhaps he can obliterate
us. Fear is always present with me. God is dead. Big tits can make me
feel happy, and saved. Mary and I are not related and can only marry
if God permits. Why can't we live by ourselves?'

3. 'Purgation. Lightning strikes trees but only when it rains hard.
Water runs along green branches carrying specks of bird-shit. Clouds
follow the sun which shines only on holidays. Thunder is loud but

134 NARRATIVE SKILLS

soft in rain. Why can trees blow their leaves towards the houses? Why
does rain trickle down my trees? I like rain when it splatters against
my house and face. Should ghosts haunt my house? I would like it if
God left me alone. Ghosts like butter, mice like ghosts, butter likes
me. Poetry destroys all images and reincarnation. Why, why can't I
live without people and Jesus and poetry? If it destroys me it destroys
everything. Bombs destroy people, God and me. Are bombs created
by God or are poets Gods, or is love a bomb which destroys rain?'

4. 'Autumn. He walked through the trees carrying a body which
bumped gently against the ground, which was hard and frozen. She
held his hand, softly whispering "Dead !" Can't leaves drift under the
bodies without breaking? Is Mother dying or has she died without
screaming "Dead !" whispered Mary. He shook the leaves off Mother
and began sprinkling dirt over her grave. After death will God see her
face? Will Mother laugh at God or cry "Dead!"? Should we mourn
her parting? Leaves tremble and fall swiftly. Time carries her scythe
tenderly without cutting her throat. Leaves cut my heart, but Jesus
cuts my mother. Between them their relationship seems brittle and
lifeless like dead leaves.'

5. 'Love lost. Sunshine brightens my life. Yesterday, today, tomor-
row; all my loves have flown towards oblivion. Death approaches
from lost loves. Is death the answer? Can Christ save lost lovers or do
angels meet flying shadows under sunlit gardens? Black night frightens
angels. Dark alleys frighten lovers. Only lovers know love and see
nothing but sunshine. Perhaps death hides people from the heaven-
sent sunshine, or love hides from death. When you travel through
darkness, hold love tightly, for you will need all the strength of your
love to be unafraid of death. Why should we not love again, though
we may lose our lives from lost loves? Death cannot change us, or
destroy us, while God loves lovers.'

6. 'Shipwrecks are dangerous to people on ships. Waves cause
shipwrecks and are beautiful. How can beautiful waves destroy
people without turning ugly? Jesus walks : untroubled footsteps sound
across vast oceans of beautiful waves. Shipwrecks begin when love
disappears. Jesus hears no footsteps, only the screams of the dying
waves which patter his feet. Why do mermaids not hear God? Is
death inevitable? Do shipwrecks begin when ears are hearing nothing
but footsteps? Can I hear waves beating on nothing? Only if I make
footsteps heard. Christmas comes when God is deaf to our screams,
and waves become destructive and silent like Jesus's feet.'

7. 'Sabbat. Seven dwarfs stood silently watching. Six leprechauns,

NARRATIVE SKILLS I35
being present at the funeral, began dancing. Five Jews scrabbled in
mud for money which the angels took. Three dwarfs raped two
leprechauns, who said that one was enough.'

8. 'Hells I view. Black shines brightly under white silk curtains,
light filters through black windows but fades colours anyway. Win-
dows shine at people from afar. Darkness surrounds me as I gaze at
people in the street. Is my body there or am I looking at it through
dark windows?'

9. 'Seagulls. Look at the seagulls circling above this place, like
shadows falling at noon. Wings are made for flying higher and higher
and swifter and stronger than anything crawling below. How do birds
know what it is like to be earthbound? Perhaps they envy creatures
who crawl and swim. If I could fly, like them, at the end of autumn
where leaves lie brown and decaying, then I would know that God is
a being who flies.'

10. 'Snow is gentle and cold. It falls from above us. Death is only
snow. It falls to cover our lives. But we cannot melt away death like
sunshine melts snow. Coldness comes, only once the snow has fallen.
// / can melt my snow will also melt, but because I am never fully warm
I cannot live. Terror is cold. Fear is cold and only I can depend on
heat. Love is warm. Ah ! If only we had love always, we could conquer,
and live forever. The people who love themselves cannot melt their
snow. Only you can melt my snow, for our love can never fail, for
however cold it becomes, we shall love each other and therefore melt
each other's snows and live forever.'

11. 'Happiness is always transient. Perhaps we should try to be
happier and better with our friends. Friendship is transient but
transcience meets often with lasting friendship. Why can't we meet
other people and make friendships last? Am I ever going to meet my
friends in honest friendship? Or will we ever see our own friendships
die through lack of love? Which is the better? I don't like to leave
friends behind but friendship will come again. Love is permanent
only when friendship and trust exists. If friendship is transient, trust
must be the permanent basis of love.'

12. 'Strings vibrate when they feel varying pressures upon them.
Sounds echo through empty buildings. Light shines brightly, but only
enters through open spaces in walls. My room vibrates silently and
darkly. No light enters my room. It feels no emotion, like a static
building where strings never vibrate. I cannot live alone, listening to
silence and seeing nothing but walls and darkness. Why does light not
enter my room? Must I feel deaf to vibrating strings and see nothing?

136 NARRATIVE SKILLS

Where am I, where are you? Where are the people who play music
and vibrate strings? When will I hear and see music? I can't tell. Only
you can help me see and hear. I only live, hoping that you love me.
Give me your hand, and take away my darkness and silence.'

13. 'Summer roses die when winter strangles the ground. Weeds
flourish when roses die. I lived in a thorn bush until roses began to
die, then I left my thorn bush and ran towards the sun. I felt it warm
my body as I had no clothes on. Approaching dusk saw me shiver, but
I still ran towards the sun, and finally dropped towards the end of life.
Roses covered my body. Dawn came and warmed the roses and me.
Then at noon I burned. My body could not feel pain. I stood among
the flourishing roses. They did not burn. Midnight came. I tried to
return to my thorn bush but I was cold. If I cannot grow into a rose,
I must die, and become a weed.'

14. 'Walls encircle me. My heart has walls which surround my
blood, beating steadily and relentlessly it pushes through my veins
because I am so alive. Talk to me please. The walls are thin and
crumbling. Life is being drained from within my body. Stop the
current. I must break through the walls which hold my body. Death
will soon release the aching heart, but I am not afraid. Here is my
heart, now take a piece and smash down my walls.'

If you play this game with children, then it's important not to insist
on leading. Here's a 'story' I improvised with a 'disturbed' nine-year-
old boy. His words are in italics, and you can see how little I contri-
buted.

'A year ago strangely enough dead people strangled my mother. How
did they do this? "Help!" cried Thing-a-me-boober, "I went over
Heaven and Hell, where did you stop?" Hell is the ugliest place / have
ever seen. Devil George swims through waves of flame to strengthen his
bones. Mother screamed when she saw George holding a stick called a
pitchfork. She fainted when my friend hit her over the head with a
bucket of molten metal. Meanwhile, back in my own Casbah I got very
drunk.'

A game can stare you in the face for years before you 'see' it. It
wasn't until I'd left the studio that I thought of asking students to act
the stories out as they told them.

I get the actors to work in pairs, with their arms round each
other, to say 'We' instead of T, and to use the present tense. I dis-
courage them from putting in adjectives, or saying 'But'. It's normal
for them to encounter something unpleasant, and to hold it off with
adjectives by saying 'We . . . met ... a ... big .. . huge . . . terrifying

NARRATIVE SKILLS 137
. . . angry . . . black . . . monster . . . but . . . we . . . escaped.' Once
they've mastered the basic technique of the game (which is very easy)
then I forbid them to escape from the monsters. 'Kill it or be killed,'
I say, 'or make friends with it, outwit it.' I remind them that there
isn't really a monster, so what does it matter if they allow themselves
to be torn apart? If they get eaten or killed I say 'Go on, don't stop the
game.' Then they can fight their way out of the monster, or continue
in heaven, or whatever. They can mime sitting astride enormous
turds and paddle through the intestines. If they get to heaven they can
find God is missing and take over the place, or arm-wrestle him, or
anything.

The audience can hardly believe that it's possible to improvise
scenes in this way, and they're delighted to see actors working in such
sympathy. I used to ask the audience for tides first, and I usually
combined two titles to make one; the actors would then improvise
Dracula and the Bald Lighthouse Keeper, or Rin-Tin-Tin and the
Fall of the Roman Empire.

Some people avoid getting involved in action. All they'll produce
is stories like ' We-are-going-to-the-market-where-we-buy-bread-and-
now-we-walk-to-the-beack-wkere-we-watck-the-seagulls . . .' It's a good
idea to start such people off inside a womb, or on another planet, or
being hunted for murder, or some other dramatic situation.

The game can be intensified by having one partner close his eyes,
while the other partner stops him from bumping into the furniture.
In another version both partners close their eyes, while the group
stand round them and protect them. If the group is in a good state,
that is to say warm and friendly, then they'll begin to add things to
the story. If a wind is mentioned the group will spontaneously make
wind noises, or perhaps flap coats around them to make a draught. If
the storytellers are in the forest, then bird sounds will be made, or
rustlings. Soon the group begin to dictate parts of the action, providing
encounters with animals or monsters. An extraordinary energy is
released, an almost sinister excitement sweeps over the group, and all
sorts of sensitivity exercises are discovered. The group will 'fly' the
story tellers, and bury them in heaps of bodies or be 'spiders' crawling
all over their skins.

It's amazing to be one of the 'storytellers' because everything
becomes so real for you. Once your eyes are shut, and you're involved
in the story, and people begin to supply even very approximate
effects, the brain suddenly links it all up, and fills in the gaps. If
someone touches your face with a wet leaf you hallucinate a whole

I38 NARRATIVE SKILLS

forest, you know what kind of trees are there, the type of animals, and
so on.

One extraordinary way to play word-at-a-time games is to ask a
whole group to tell the story, all speaking together. I don't know how
to convince you that this is possible, but most groups can succeed at
it, if you approach them at the right moment. Start with everyone
pressed together, and say 'Start with "We" and all speak at the same
time.' I suppose it works because many people say the same words, and
the minority who go 'wrong' are swamped out by the majority.

4

'Playwriting'

An improviser can study status transactions, and
advancing, and 'reincorporating', and can learn to free-associate, and
to generate narrative spontaneously, and yet still find it difficult to
compose stories. This is really for aesthetic reasons, or conceptual
reasons. He shouldn't really think of making up stories, but of
interrupting routines.

If I say 'Make up a story', then most people are paralysed. If I say
'describe a routine and then interrupt it', people see no problem. A
film like The Last Detail is based on the routine of two sailors travel-
ling across America with a prisoner whom they have to deliver to a
prison. The routine is interrupted by their decision to give him a good
time. The story I fantasised earlier about the bear who chased me
was presumably an interruption of the routine 'Walking through the
forest'. Red Riding Hood presents an interruption of the routine
'Taking a basket of goodies to Grandma'.

Many people think of finding more interesting routines, which
doesn't solve the problem. It may be interesting to have a vet rectally
examining an elephant, or to show b-ain surgeons doing a particularly
delicate operation, but these activities remain routines. If two lava-
tory attendants break a routine by starting a brain operation, or if a
window cleaner begins to examine the elephant, then this is likely to
generate a narrative. Conversely, two brain surgeons working as
lavatory cleaners immediately sounds like part of a story. If I describe
mountaineers climbing a mountain, then the routine says that they
first climb it, and then they climb down, which isn't much of a story.
A film of a mountain climb isn't necessarily anything more than a
documentary. If we interrupt the routine of mountain-climbing by
having them discover a crashed plane, or if we snow them up and

NARRATIVE SKILLS 139
have them start eating each other, or whatever, then we begin story-
telling. As a story progresses it begins to establish other routines and
these in their turn have to be broken. In the story about the bear I
escaped to an island and began making love to a beautiful girl. This
can also be considered as a routine that it's necessary to interrupt.
I interrupted it with the bear, but I could have chosen one of an
infinity of other ways. I could have found that she was wearing a wig
to hide her complete baldness, or that I was impotent, or that my
penis was growing so long that it had made its way to the shore of the
lake where it was being attacked by the bear. I could have discovered
that she was my sister — Maupassant set such a story in a brothel.

It doesn't matter how stupidly you interrupt a routine, you will be
automatically creating a narrative, and people will listen. The scene
in The Tempest where Caliban hears the clown coming works marvel-
lously, but it's ludicrous. The first routine suggests that Caliban will
defend himself, or leave. He crawls under a. sheet. When the clown
enters he sees this monster hiding under the sheet. If we treat this as a
routine, then it's obvious that the clown runs away. What he does is
incredible — the very last thing anyone would do is to crawl under the
sheet beside the monster. It's actually the best thing to do, since it '
spectacularly breaks the routine.

We could introduce this concept by getting each actor in a scene to
prearrange something that'll surprise his partner. In a scene where a
couple are about to go to bed, maybe the husband suddenly turns into
a boot fetishist, or maybe the wife will suddenly start to laugh
hysterically, or find she's growing feathers. If you set out to do some-
thing in a scene that your partner can't anticipate, you automatically
generate a narrative.

Sometimes stories themselves become so predictable that they be-
come routines. Nowadays if your princess kisses the frog, it's probably
ter if she becomes a frog herself, or if the frog she kissed just be-
is six feet higher. It's no good the knight killing the dragon and
: the virgin any more. Killing the virgin and deflowering
dragon is more likely to hold the audience's attention.
One way that storytellers wreck their talent is by cancelling. A
at of mine wrote a scene in which a girl friend messed up her
ex-boy friend's apartment in an act of revenge. He arrived and they
had a row. Once the row was over and she had left, the playwright had
of 'failure', or having done nothing— which was true.
When I told the writer to consider the row as a routine which needed
to be broken, she wrote a scene in which at the height of the row the

140 NARRATIVE SKILLS

girl suddenly injected the ex-boy friend with a syringe, and locked
herself in the bathroom. One moment there was a row going on, and
the next the man was suddenly terrified of what she might have done
to him.

Many students dry up at the moment they realise that the routine
they're describing is nearing its completion. They absolutely under-
stand that a routine needs to be broken, or they wouldn't feel so
unimaginative. Their problem is that they haven't realised what's
wrong consciously. Once they understand the concept of 'interrupting
routines', then they aren't stuck for ideas any more.

Another way that improvisers screw themselves up is by moving
the action elsewhere. An improvisation starts with a girl asking a boy
for the time. He says it's four o'clock. She says that the others are
late, and they begin talking about these imaginary others, and what
happened last time, and the scene fizzles out. I tell them that they got
diverted into a discussion of events that happened another time, and
that there was nothing for the audience to see. I start them again
with the opening dialogue. She asks what time it is. He says, 'Four
o'clock.' I shout out: 'Say it's time to begin.' 'It's time to begin,' he
says. 'Must we?' she asks. He says, 'Well you know how strict he is',
and again they begin talking about something outside the scene. I
tell them I don't care what they do so long as the action remains
onstage. 'Get a bucket,' I say, and the actor mimes carrying on a
bucket. 'Is it really necessary?' implores the actress. 'Yes,' he replies,
'open your mouth, I'll put the funnel in.' 'I've put on twenty pounds
in the last week,' she complains. 'He likes them fat,' he says, pouring
the 'contents' of the 'bucket' into the 'funnel' while she pretends to
be swelling up. The scene now seems inspired, and the audience are
fascinated. (Speke found this scene in reality : a tribe where the king's
wives were forcibly fed, and sprawled about like great seals.)

One of the first games I used at the studio involved getting Actor A
to order Actor B about: 'Sit down. Stand up. Go to the wall. Yawn.
Say "I'm tired." Look around. Walk to the door . . .' and so on. We
weren't trying to create narratives; we only wanted the actors to get
used to obeying each other, and to ordering each other around. This
game (if you can call it a game) exposed them to an 'audience' without
their having to think about success or failure.

"Now that I'm teaching 'playwriting' in a Canadian university, I've
adapted this early game into a way of teaching narrative skills. Two
students obey a third who tells them what to say and do. The third
student, the 'playwright', will be under a certain amount of stress,

NARRATIVE SKILLS 141
but if he blocks I tell him to say 'prompt', and then someone tells him
what to say next. We don't play the game in order to get 'good stories',
although 'good stories' may emerge; the important thing is to investi-
gate exactly why the playwright 'blocks'.

A playwright who gets his two students to wash up soon stops and
says 'I can't think of anything.' If I say 'Break the routine' he has one
student break a plate on purpose. He now has a quarrel which he can
develop for a while, but which is also a routine. They decide to put the
plate together, and find a piece is missing. They investigate and find a
hole in the floor. They peer through the hole and start talking about
what they see underneath. The playwright then gets stuck again.
What he's done is to move the action offstage, so I tell him he's been
deflected, and that he's to get the action onstage again. He tells them to
tear up the floorboards, and the 'block' dissolves.

An audience will remain interested if the story is advancing in some
sort of organised manner, but they want to see routines interrupted,
and the action continuing between the actors. When a Greek messenger
comes in with some ghastly story about events that have happened
somewhere else, the important thing is the effect the revelation pro-
duces on the other characters. Otherwise it stops being theatre, and
becomes 'literature'.

A 'playwright' begins a story by saying: 'Dennis, sit on the chair,
and look ill. Betty, say "Are you feeling well?". Dennis, say "No,
could you get me a glass of water." Betty, get Dennis a glass of water.
Drink it, Dennis. Betty, say "How do you feel?". Dennis, say "Much
better now" . . .'

At this point the 'playwright' becomes confused, so I stop him and
lain that he's cancelled everything out. He introduces the idea of
-ess, and then he removes it. I take the story back to when Dennis
drinks the glass of water. 'Dennis, find that the water goes right through
you, and is splashing on the floor under the chair. Betty, get him
another glass of water. Dennis, examine yourself to try to work out
at happened. Betty, give him the water, and put the glass under
chair to catch it when it runs through again. Dennis, say "Can
1 help me?". Betty, say "You'll have to take your clothes off,
Dennis, mime undressing . . .' And so on. The level of inven-
tion is no higher, but the story is no longer being cancelled, and it holds
the attention.

There's nothing very profound about such stories, and they don't
require much imagination, but people are very happy to watch them.
The rules are: (1) interrupt a routine; (2) keep the action onstage —

142 NARRATIVE SKILLS

don't get diverted on to an action that has happened elsewhere, or at
some other time; (3) don't cancel the story.

I began this essay by saying that an improviser
shouldn't be concerned with content, because the content arrives
automatically. This is true, and also not true. The best improvisers do,
at some level, know what their work is about. They may have trouble
expressing it to you, but they do understand the implications of what
they are doing; and so do the audience.

I think of an improvisation we did years ago : Anthony Trent played
being a prisoner in a cell. Lucy Fleming arrived, I don't remember
how, and he endowed her with invisibility. At first he was terrified,
but she calmed him down, and said she had come to rescue him. She
led him out of the prison and as he stepped free he fell dead. It had the
same kind of effect as Ambrose Bierce's story Incident at Owl Creek
Bridge.

I remember Richardson Morgan playing a scene in which I said he
I was to be fired, and in which he said he was failing at his work because
he had cancer. I think Ben Benison was the boss and he treated Ric
with amazing harshness. It was about the cruellest scene I've ever seen
and the audience were hysterical with laughter. I've never heard
people laugh more. The actors seemed to be dragging all the audience's
greatest fears into the open, laying out all their insecurities, and the
anxiety was releasing itself in waves of roaring, tearing laughter, and
the actors absolutely knew what they were doing, and just how slowly
to turn the screw.

LYou have to trick students into believing that content isn't important
d that it looks after itself, or they never get anywhere. It's the same
kind of trick you use when you tell them that they are not their imagin-
ations, that their imaginations have notlting to do with them, and
* that they're in no way responsible for what their 'mind' gives them.
In the end they learn how to abandon control while at the same time
they exercise control. They begin to understand that everything is just
a shell. You have to misdirect people to absolve them of responsibility.
Then, much later, they become strong enough to resume the respons-
ibility themselves. By that time they have a more truthful concept of
what they are.

Masks and Trance

1

George De vine

George Devine gave a Mask class to the Royal Court
writers' group in 1958. He arrived with a box full of dusty Masks that
had last been used some years before at the Old Vic Theatre School.
I didn't like the look of them : they reminded me of surgical pros-
theses, and I didn't like what he was saying either. Already I was
feeling threatened. George talked to us for about forty minutes, and
then gave us a demonstration. He retired to the far end of the long,
shadowy room, put a Mask on, looked in a mirror, and turned to face
us— or rather 'it', 'the Mask', turned to face us. We saw a 'toad-god'
who laughed and laughed as if we were funny and despicable. I don't
know how long the 'scene' lasted, it was timeless. Then George
removed the Mask and suggested that we try.

Next day he was despondent. He thought the class had been a
failure and that this had been his fault. He said that none of the Masks
had been 'inhabited', by which he meant that none of us had been
possessed by the Masks. I tried to explain how amazed we'd been, but
he insisted that the class had been a poor one, and that I was wrong to
be so enthusiastic.

William Gaskill borrowed the Masks, and began to give Mask classes
along the lines laid down by George. He collected some old clothes,
and some props, and developed the theory that the actor should shock
himself with the Mask's reflection. The time at the mirror was to be
kept short, and the student was to be pushed into acting on whatever
impulse came to him. George's ideas related to Oriental theatre
(Noguchi had designed his King Lear) but we had seen the toad-god,
and thought more in terms of voodoo than the Noh Theatre. Gaskill
persuaded me to give Mask classes as well : 'It shouldn't all be left to
me,' he said, and we both gave classes to groups who visited the theatre.

It's true that an actor can wear a Mask casually, and just pretend to
be another person, but Gaskill and myself were absolutely clear that
we were trying to induce trance states. The reason why one auto-
matically talks and writes of Masks with a capital 'M' is that one
really feels that the genuine Mask actor is inhabited by a spirit. Non-

144 MASKS AND TRANCE

sense perhaps, but that's what the experience is like, and has always
been like. To understand the Mask it's also necessary to understand
the nature of trance itself.

One day Devine invited me to lunch, which he never did unless he
wanted to discuss something. He was embarrassed (he was actually a
shy man), and finally when we were almost through coffee and the
restaurant was practically empty, he said that he thought Bill and I had
misunderstood the nature of the Mask. At this time George was
giving comedy classes at the Studio, so I suggested a swop: I would
give his comedy classes, and he would give my Mask classes.

George allowed his students to work in a very casual way. Bill and I
had tried to condition a response to the wearing of a Mask by insisting
that whenever one was on the face, the actor should attempt to enter
the 'Mask state'. This led to Masks being handled as if sacred. George
shocked me by allowing actors to talk as themselves while actually
wearing the Masks. They'd choose clothes or wander about with the
Masks on without any attempt to be in character. I think George was
overreacting to the way we'd been teaching, because even in per-
formance these Masks often spoke with the wearer's voice, although
George had explained that they'd need speech lessons before they
could speak 'as the Masks'. Eventually, George said that the students
who had worked first with William Gaskill and myself were usually
the better ones, so that our method must have something to recom-
mend it. I think this was because we used to hurl the students into
the work, whereas George was much gentler. He was very good at
explaining exactly when a Mask was 'inhabited', but it was really up
to the actors. Many of his students played safe, and kept to their
preferred areas acting with Masks on, rather than being possessed.
George's attitude was really very different from mine, and possibly
Gaskill's; George was primarily interested in developing characters
that could be used without the Mask when the actor was cast in plays.
I saw the Masks as astounding performers, as offering a new form of
theatre, and I didn't care what Mask creatures arrived, so long as they
were possessed. The Masks we wer: using covered the top half of
the face, leaving the mouth and lower half of the cheeks exposed.
George had learnt the technique from Michel Saint-Denis m the
1930s, and Michel had been taught by Jacques Copeau (his uncle).
These half masks are usually called 'comic masks' but George called
them 'Character Masks'. He thought it important to hand on the
tradition unchanged, and he was shocked when he found that I was
mixing Character Masks with Tragic Masks (Tragic Masks work by a

MASKS AND TRANCE 145
quite different technique— see page 184). My students showed him one
of the mixed scenes they had prepared with me, and they reported
him as saying that it did work, but that he still didn't like it! When I
visited him during his last illness, almost the last thing he said to me
was 'I still don't think that Mask work was right.'

George cited Chaplin's Tramp as a Mask, since the character had
come from the clothes and the make-up. Here's Chaplin's own ac-
count (from his autobiography).

'On the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy
pants, big shoes, and a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything to
be a contradiction; the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and
the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look young or old, but
remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I
added a small moustache which, I reasoned, would add age without
hiding my expression ....

'. . . I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed,
the clothes and make-up made me feel the kind of person he was. I
began to know him, and by the time I walked on the stage he was fully
born. When I confronted Sennett I assumed the character and strutted
about, swinging my cane and parading before him. Gags and comedy
ideas went racing through my mind ....

'. . . My character was different and unfamiliar to the Americans.
But with the clothes on I felt he was a reality, a living person. In fact
he ignited all sorts of crazy ideas that I would never have dreamt of
until I was dressed and made-up as the Tramp.'

Elsewhere Chaplin has said, T realised I would have to spend the
rest of my life finding out about the creature. For me he was fixed,
complete, the moment I looked in the mirror and saw him for the
first time, yet even now I don't know all the things that are to be
known about him.' 1 (Isabel Quigly, Charlie Chaplin— Early Comedies,
Studio Vista, 1968.)

2

Russians

At first I thought that Mask work was completely
unlike Stanislavsky's concept of actor training, but this isn't true.
Here's Stanislavsky describing the Mask state in Building a Character.
Kostya, a drama student, has been told to put on a character make-up,
but nothing satisfies him. He creams his face to remove the grease-
paint and then, unexpectedly . . .

I46 MASKS AND TRANCE

'All the other colours blurred It was difficult to distinguish

where my nose was, or my eyes, or my lips. I smeared some of the
same cream on my beard and moustache and then finally all over my
wig. Some of the hair clotted into lumps .... and then, almost as if I
were in some delirium, I trembled, my heart pounded, I did away
with my eyebrows, powdered myself at random, smeared the back of
my hands with a greenish colour and the palms with light pink. I did
all this with a quick, sure touch, for this time I knew who I was rep-
resenting, and what kind of fellow he was !'

He then paced the room feeling 'how all the parts of my body,
features, facial lines, fell into their proper places and established
themselves. ... I glanced in the mirror and did not recognise myself.
Since I had looked into it the last time a fresh transformation had

taken place in me. "It is he, it is he!" I exclaimed '

He presents himself to the director (Tortsov), introducing himself
as 'the critic'. He's surprised to find his body doing things by itself,
things he hadn't intended.

'Quite unexpectedly my twisted leg came out in advance of me and
threw my body more to the right. I removed my top hat with careful
exaggeration and executed a polite bow. . . .'

He then played a scene with the director, having no difficulty in
sustaining this weird character he had become, and knowing always
exactly what to say. Later Kostya reflects: 'Can I really say that this
creature is not part of me? I derived him from my own nature. I
divided myself, as it were, into two personalities. One continued as an
actor, the other as an observer.'

At the time when Copeau was working with Masks in France,
Stanislavsky's favourite pupil Vakhtangov was working with them in
Russia. Nikolai Gorchakov has left an account of those rehearsals.
Vakhtangov set up a circus in which the Masks were to be auditioned
as clowns. They were to do things that would make the spectators
'. . . applaud wildly, rush on the stage and hug and kiss you! Or at
least roll on the floor with laughter. Go ahead, start! . . .'

Vakhtangov threw an incredible number of instructions to the
Masks until they were lost and confused. Someone played circus
music and they had no choice but to perform. They tried imaginary
gymnastics, and ice-skated, and pretended to juggle, and finally
succeeded in getting warm applause from the onlookers. 'Do you really
think you've hit on the "grain" of the Masks merely by doing a few
exercises in front of the audience?' said Vakhtangov. 'You haven't even
started to act as Masks ! . . . You must vie with one another in capti-

MASKS AND TRANCE 147
vating the audience by every possible means— talk, act, dance, sing, do
acrobatics, do anything. Understand?'

Things got worse until finally Vakhtangov left, the Masks contin-
uing without him. Suddenly two of them became genuine Masks in
the characters of Tartaglia and Pantalone. Tartaglia was eating a cake,
and Pantalone was starving. Tartaglia spoke with a stutter (which was
unexpected) and said that Pantalone would have to earn it, but he
'graciously allowed Pantalone to eat the crumbs remaining on his
palm each time he swallowed a bit. This made Pantalone very happy,
and it was fun watching him pick up these crumbs while Tartaglia
lectured him on the necessity of work. . . .

'The episode was fairly long, but we were so enchanted we did not
notice it. We were not much interested in their chatter, but were
fascinated by their naive seriousness, the kind one sees only in two
children when one is sucking a toffee and the other cannot tear his
eyes away from this sweet process, looking enviously at the happy
owner. . . .

'Tartaglia was so carried away that he began to tease Pantalone,
passing the cake under his nose every time he nipped a bit off. Sud-
denly, Pantalone opened wide his mouth and snapped up about three-
quarters of what remained. Tartaglia burst into tears while Pantalone,
his mouth full, gestured that it served him right— he should not have
teased him.'

Vakhtangov had been watching from a doorway. He immediately
set up another scene with the same characters. Pantalone was to be a
dentist, and Tartaglia his patient. Tartaglia panicked, stepped out of
character and said he didn't want to do it.

' "And what do the dentists say to that?" Vakhtangov turned
gravely to his partners.

' "There have been many cases in history of medicine of patients
refusing to be treated," Kudryavtsev replies seriously, without for-
getting that he was Pantalone, the learned secretary of King Altoum's
court. "Such refusal is a sure sign of illness. In this particular case I
presume we'll have to extract the aching teeth not only through the
mouth, but also through other apertures, ears and nostrils includ-
ed " '

Afterwards Vakhtangov commented that they had at first tried to
think up' what to do. 'I don't deny the importance of thinking,
inventing or planning, but if you have to improvise on the spot (and
that's exactly what we have to do), you must act and not think. It's
action we must have — wise, foolish or naive, simple or complicated,

I48 MASKS AND TRANCE

but action: (Nikolai Gorchakov, The Vakhtangov School of Stage
Art, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.)

Vakhtangov forced his students to act spontaneously. This produces
a light trance state in which the actors feel as if something else is
controlling them. They 'know' what to do, whereas normally they
'choose' what to do. The state is regressive, but they experience no
self-consciousness.

3 Destroying the Mask

Masks seem exotic when you first learn about them,
but to my mind Mask acting is no stranger than any other kind: no
more weird than the fact that an actor can blush when his character is
embarrassed, or turn white with fear, or that a cold will stop for the
duration of the performance, and then start streaming again as soon as
the curtain falls. 'What's Hecuba to him?' asks Hamlet, and the mystery
remains. Actors can be possessed by the character they play just as
they can be possessed by Masks. Many actors have been unable to
really 'find' a character until they put on the make-up, or until they
try on the wig, or the costume. We find the Mask strange because we
don't understand how irrational our responses to the face are anyway,
and we don't realise that much of our lives is spent in some form of
trance, i.e. absorbed. What we assume to be 'normal consciousness' is
comparatively rare, it's like the light in the refrigerator : when you look
in, there you are ON but what's happening when you don't look in?

It's difficult to understand the power of the Mask if you've only
seen it in illustrations, or in museums. The Mask in the showcase may
have been intended as an ornament on the top of a vibrating, swishing
haystack. Exhibited without its costume, and without a film, or even
photograph, of the Mask in use, we respond to it only as an aesthetic
object. Many Masks are beautiful or striking, but that's not the point.
A Mask is a device for driving the personality out of the body and
allowing a spirit to take possession of it. A very beautiful Mask may
be completely dead, while a piece of old sacking with a mouth and
eye-holes torn in it may have tremendous vitality.

In its original culture nothing had more power than the Mask. It
was used as an oracle, a judge, an arbitrator. Some were so sacred that
any outsider who caught a glimpse of them was executed. They cured
diseases, they made women sterile. Some tribes were so scared of
their power that they carved the eye-holes so that the wearers could
see only the ground. Some Masks were led on chains to keep them

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MASKS AND TRANCE 149
attacking the onlookers. One African Mask had a staff, the touch
of which was believed to cause leprosy. In some cultures dead people
are reincarnated as Masks— the back of the skull is sliced off, a stick
rammed in from ear to ear, and someone dances, gripping the stick with
his teeth. It's difficult to imagine the intensity of that experience.

Masks are surrounded by rituals that reinforce their power. A
Tibetan Mask was taken out of its shrine once a year and set up over-
night in a locked chapel. Two novice monks sat all night chanting
prayers to prevent the spirit of the Mask from breaking loose. For
miles around the villagers barred their doors at sunset and no one
ventured out. Next day the Mask was lowered over the head of the
dancer who was to incarnate the spirit at the centre of a great cere-
mony. What must it feel like to be that dancer, when the terrifying face
becomes his own?
We don't know much about Masks in this culture, partly because
church sees the Mask as pagan, and tries to suppress it wherever
it has the power (the Vatican has a museum full of Masks confiscated
from the 'natives'), but also because this culture is usually hostile to
trance states. We distrust spontaneity, and try to replace it by reason:
e Mask was driven out of theatre in the same way that improvisation
as driven out of music. Shakers have stopped shaking. Quakers don't
quake any more. Hypnotised people used to stagger about, and trem-
ble. Victorian mediums used to rampage about the room. Education
itself might be seen as primarily an anti-trance activity. 2

The church struggled against the Mask for centuries, but what can't
be done by force is eventually done by the all-pervading influence of
Western education. The US Army burned the voodoo temples in
Haiti and the priests were sentenced to hard labour with little effect,
but voodoo is now being suppressed in a more subtle way. The
ceremonies are faked for tourists. The genuine ceremonies now last
for a much shorter time.

I see the Mask as something that is continually flaring up in this
culture, only to be almost immediately snuffed out. No sooner have I
established a tradition of Mask work somewhere than the students
start getting taught the 'correct' movements, just as they learn a
phoney 'Commedia dell' Arte' technique. The manipulated Mask is
hardly worth having, and is easy to drive out of the theatre. The Mask
begins as a sacred object, and then becomes secular and is used in
ivals and in the theatre. Finally it is remembered only in the feeble
imitations of Masks sold in the tourist shops. The Mask dies when it
is entirely subjected to the will of the performer.

150 MASKS AND TRANCE

4

Faces

We have instinctive responses to faces. Parental feel-
ings seem to be triggered by flat faces and big foreheads. We try and
be rational and assert that 'people can't help their appearance', yet
we feel we know all about Snow White and the Witch, or Laurel and
Hardy, just by the look of them. The truth is that we learn to hold
characteristic expressions as a way of maintaining our personalities,
and we're far more influenced by faces than we realise. When I was a
child there were faces in books that were so terrible that I had to jam
the books tight into the bookcase for fear they would somehow leak
out into the house. Adults lose this vision in which the face is the
person, but after their first Mask class students are amazed by passers-
by in the street— suddenly they see 'evil' people, and 'innocent'
people, and people holding their faces in Masks of pain, or grief, or
pride, or whatever. Our faces get 'fixed' with age as the muscles
shorten, but even in very young people you can see that a decision has
been taken to appear tough, or stupid, or defiant. (Why should anyone
wish to look stupid? Because then your teachers expect less of you.)
Sometimes in acting class a student will break out of his habitual facial
expression and you won't know who he is until you look at his clothes.
I've seen this transformation several times, and each time the student
is flooded with great joy and exhilaration. 3

Even if you just alter the face with make-up, astounding effects can
be produced. A journalist called Bill Richardson told me that he'd
been asked to take part in a circus matinee as one of the clowns. It was
when he was a cub reporter, and his editor had thought it might make
an interesting story. Once the make-up was on he became 'possessed'
and found himself able to tumble about, catch his feet in buckets, and
so on, as if he'd been a clown in another incarnation. He stayed with
the circus for some weeks, but he never got the same feeling without
the make-up.

Another journalist, John Howard Griffin, disguised himself as a
black man. He wrote:

'The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see
myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in
the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt
no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from
existence. I looked in the mirror and saw reflected nothing of the

MASKS AND TRANCE 151
John Griffin's past. No, the reflections led back to Africa, back
to the shanty and the ghetto, back to the fruitless struggles against the
mark of blackness. Suddenly, almost with no mental preparation, no
advance hint, it became clear and it permeated my whole being. My
inclination was to fight against it. I had gone too far. . . . The com-
pleteness of the transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything
I had imagined. I became two men, the observing one and the one
who panicked, who felt negroid even into the depths of his entrails.'
(John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me, Panther, 1969.)

It's not surprising then to find that Masks produce changes in the
personality, or that the first sight of oneself wearing a Mask and
reflected in a mirror should be so disturbing. A bad Mask will produce
little effect, but a good Mask will give you the feeling that you know
about the creature in the mirror. You feel that the Mask is about
take over. It is at this moment of crisis that the Mask teacher will
je you to continue. In most social situations you are expected to
maintain a consistent personality. In a Mask class you are encouraged
to 'let go', and allow yourself to become possessed.

5

Trance

Many actors report 'split' states of consciousness, or
amnesias; they speak of their body acting automatically, or as being
habited by the character they are playing.

Fanny Kemble: 'The curious part of acting, to me, is the sort of
_ble process which the mind carries on at once, the combined
operation of one's faculties, so to speak, in diametrically opposite
directions; for instance, in that very last scene of Mrs Beverley, while
I was half dead with crying in the midst of real grief, created by an
entirely unreal cause, I perceived that my tears were falling like rain
all over my silk dress, and spoiling it; and I calculated and measured
most accurately the space that my father would require to fall in, and
moved myself and my train accordingly in the midst of the anguish I
was to feign, and absolutely did endure.' (William Archer, Masks and
Faces, 18S8.)

Sybil Thorndike : 'When you're an actor you cease to be male and
female, you're a person, and you're a person with all the other persons
inside you.' {Great Acting, BBC Publications, 1967.)

Edith Evans: '. . . I seem to have an awful lot of people inside me.
Do you know what I mean? If I understand them I feel terribly like

152 MASKS AND TRANCE

them when I'm doing them by thinking you turn into the person,

if you think strongly enough. It's quite odd sometimes, you know.
You are it, for quite a bit, and then you're not. . . .' (Great Acting.)

In another kind of culture I think it's clear that such actors could
easily talk of being 'possessed' by the character. It's true that some
actors will maintain that they always remain 'themselves' when they're
acting, but how do they know? Improviseis who maintain that they're
in a normal state of consciousness when they improvise often have
unsuspected gaps in their memories which only emerge when you
question them closely.

It's the same with Mask actors. I remember Roddy Maude-Roxby
in a Mask that got angry during a show at Expo 67. He, or 'it', started
throwing chairs about, so I walked on stage to stop the scene. 'S'
goin' to be all right', said the Mask, waving me aside. Afterwards
Roddy remembered the chairs, but not that I'd entered the scene and
tried to stop him. If he'd been in a deeper trance he'd have forgotten
everything. The same kind of amnesias can be detected in any spon-
taneous work. An improviser writes : '. . . If a scene goes badly I
remember it. If it goes well I forget very quickly.' Orgasms are the
same.

Normally we only know of our trance states by the time jumps.
When an improviser feels that two hours have passed in twenty
minutes, we're entitled to ask where was he for the missing hour and
forty minutes.

Many people think that to be awake is the same as to be conscious,
but they can be deeply hypnotised while believing that they are in
'everyday consciousness'. A student assured me that he'd spent two
hours on stage fooling a hypnotist, which is unlikely. Then he said
that funnily enough he'd been singled out to tell the audience that
he'd really just been pretending, and that he. hadn't minded when
they laughed, because it did — by coincidence — happen to be true !

I knew a hypnotist's assistant who used to be left in store windows
as an advert for the show.

'Of course he doesn't really hypnotise me,' he said.

'No?'

'No, he used to push needles through me and it hurt, so finally I
told him and now he doesn't push them thrbugh me any more.'
'But why do you agree to sit motionless in shop windows all day?'
'Well, I like him.'

I can't imagine anyone in a normal state of consciousness sitting
motionless in shop windows day after day and doing the evening

MASKS AND TRANCE 153

How much then are we to trust what anyone tells us about their
state of mind?

We don't think of ourselves as moving in and out of trance because
we're trained not to. It's impossible to be 'in control' all the time, but
we convince ourselves that we are. Other people help to stop us
drifting. They will laugh if we don't seem immediately in possession
of ourselves, and we'll laugh too in acknowledgement of our inap-
propriate behaviour.

In 'normal consciousness' I am aware of myself as 'thinking verb-
ally'. In sports which leave no time for verbalisation, trance states are
common. If you think: 'The ball's coming at that angle but it's
spinning so that I'll anticipate the direction of the bounce by . . .' you
miss ! You don't know you're in a trance state because whenever you
check up, there you are, playing table tennis, but you may have been
in just as deep a trance as the bobsleigh rider who didn't know he'd
lost a thumb until he shook hands.

Most people only recognise 'trance' when the subject looks con-
fused — out of touch with the reality around him. We even think of
hypnosis as 'sleep'. In many trance states people are more in touch,
more observant. I remember an experiment in which deep trance
subjects were first asked how many objects there had been in the
waiting-room. When they were put into trance and asked again, it was
found that they had actually observed more than ten times the number
of objects than they consciously remembered. Zen Masters, and
sorcerers, are notoriously difficult to creep up on (Castaneda's Don
Juan, for example). In Mask work people report that perceptions are
ore intense, and that although they see differently, they see and sense
re.

I see the 'personality' as a public-relations department for the real
*d, which remains unknown. My personality always seems to be
functioning, at some level, in terms of what other people think. If I
am alone in a room and someone knocks on the door, then I 'come
back to myself'. I do this in order to check up that my social image is
presentable: are my flies done up? Is my social face properly as-
sembled? If someone enters, and I decide that I don't have to guard
myself, then I can get 'lost in the conversation'. Normal consciousness
is related to transactions, real or imagined, with other people. That's
how I experience it, and I note widespread reports of people in
Nation, or totally rejected by other people, who experience 'person-
ty disintegration'.

When you're worried about what other people might think, the

154 MASKS AND TRANCE

personality is always present. In life-or-death situations something
else takes over. A friend scalded himself and his mind split immediately
into two parts, one of which was a child screaming with pain, while
the other was cold and detached and told him exactly what to do (he
was alone at the time). If a cobra dropped out of the air vent into the
middle of an acting class, the students might find themselves on the
piano, or outside the door, with no memory of how they got there.
In extremity the body takes over for us, pushing the personality aside
as an unnecessary encumbrance.

6

Induction

How do we enter trance states? I would prefer to ask
'How do we stay out of them?' In the middle of a dark night I wake up,
how do I know I'm awake? I test for consciousness by moving a muscle.
If I block this impulse to move I feel a tremendous anxiety. The
control I exercise over the musculature reassures me that 'I'm me'.
By tensing muscles, by shifting position, by scratching, sighing,
yawning, blinking, and so on, we maintain 'normal consciousness'.
Entranced subjects will sit quite motionless for hours. An audience
'held' by a theatrical performance suddenly find a need to move, to
shift position, to cough, as the spell breaks.

If you lie down and make your body relax, going through it from
feet to head, and loosening any points of tension that you find, then
you easily float away into fantasy. The substance and shape of your
body seem to change. You feel as if the air is breathing you, rather
than you breathing the air, and the rhythm is slow and smooth like a
great tide. It's very easy to lose yourself, but if you feel the presence of
a hostile person in the room you break this trance, seizing hold of the
musculature, and becoming 'yourself' once more.

Meditators use stillness as a means of inducing trance. So do
present-day hypnotists. The subject doesn't have to be told to be still,
he knows intuitively not to assert control of his body by picking his
nose or tapping his feet.

When you are 'absorbed' you no longer control the musculature.
You can drive for miles, or play a movement from a sonata while your
personality pays no attention at all. Ncr is your performance neces-
sarily worse. When a hypnotist takes over the function normally
exercised by the personality, there's no need to leave the trance. Mask
teachers, priests in possession cults, and hypnotists all play high status

r

MASKS AND TRANCE 155
in voice and movement. A high-status person whom you accept as
dominant can easily propel you into unusual states of being. You're
likely to respond to his suggestions, and see, like Polonius, the cloud
looking like a whale. If the Queen knocked unexpectedly on your door
and said T wonder if I might use your lavatory?' then you'd probably
be in a very odd state indeed.

Eysenck tells the seemingly improbable story of a hypnotist who
worked for a total of three hundred hours on one subject with no
apparent result. When the frustrated hypnotist finally snarled, 'Go
to sleep, you ****•!' the subject went straight into deep trance. I
would interpret such an incident as the subject yielding to the status
attack of the hypnotist.

I once asked a girl to close her eyes while I put a coin under one of
three cups. Secredy I put a coin under each cup. When I asked her to
guess which cup the coin was under, she was, of course, correct. After
she'd made a correct choice about six times, she was convinced I was
somehow controlling her thoughts, and moved into a rather dis-
associated state, so I explained, and she 'snapped out of it'. I would
suggest this as a possible means of inducing hypnosis. Alan Mitchell
describes a technique of 'confusion' used by the American hypnotist,
Erickson. He writes :

'Erickson made a number of conflicting suggestions to a patient:
"Lift your left arm, now your right. Up with the left, down with the
right. Swing the left arm out and the left arm follows." Eventually
the subject became so confused by these directions, which were woolly
and conflicting, that he was glad to clutch at any straw, so long as it
was given to him firmly enough and in a loud voice. Then, while he was
so confused, if he were told : "Go to sleep", apparently he would drop
off immediately into a deep sleep.' (Harley Street Hypnotist, Harrap,
I959-)

Again we see that the subject is made to feel that his body is out of
control, and becomes subject to a high-status person. Some hypnotists
sit you down, ask you to stare upwards into their eyes and suggest
that your eyelids are wanting to close — which works because looking
upwards is tiring, and because staring up into a high-status person's
eyes makes you feel inferior. Another method involves getting you to
hold your arm out sideways while suggesting that it's getting heavier.
If you think the hypnotist is responsible for the heaviness rather than
gravity, then you are likely to accept his control. Hypnotists don't, as
sometimes claimed, ask you to put your hands together and then tell
you that you can't part them, but they do ask you to link them in such

156 MASKS AND TRANCE

a way that it's awkward to part them. If you believe the hypnotist
responsible for such awkwardness, then you may abandon the attempt
to separate them. If you squeeze your index finger hard, and then wait,
you'll feel it starting to swell— I imagine this is an illusion caused by
the weakening of the muscles of the compressing hand. This too can
be a way of inducing trance so long as the subject doesn't realise that
the 'swelling' would be experienced anyway, even without the
hypnotist's suggestion. 4

Once you understand that you're no longer held responsible for
your actions, then there's no need to maintain a 'personality'. Student
improvisers asked to pretend to be hypnotised, show a sudden im-
provement. Students asked to pretend to be hypnotists show no such
improvement.

Many ways of entering trance involve interfering with verbalisation.
Repetitive singing or chanting are effective, or holding the mind on to
single words; such techniques are often thought of as 'Oriental', but
they're universal. 5

One dramatic way of entering trance is by 'trumping'. This was
used in a West Indian play at the Royal Court, with the unwanted
result that actors kept going into real trance, and not just acting it. It
works partly by the 'crowd effect', everyone repeating the same action
and sound, but also by over-oxygenating the blood. It looks like a
'forward-moving two-step stomp'.

'With the step forward the body is bent forwards from the waist
so sharply as to seem propelled by force. At the same time the breath
exhaled, or inhaled, with great effort and sound. The forcefulness of
the action gives justification to the term "labouring" . . . When the
spirit possession does take place ... an individual's legs may seem
riveted to the ground ... or he may be thrown to the ground.'
(S. E. Simpson, Religious Cults of Caribbean: Trinidad, Jamaica and
Haiti, Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1970.)

Crowds are trance-inducing because the anonymity imposed by the
crowd absolves you of the need to maintain your identity.

7

Possession

The type of trance I am concerned with in this essay
is the 'controlled trance', in which permission to remain 'entranced'
is given by other people, either by an individual or a group. Such
trances may be rare, or may pass unrecognised in this culture, but we

MASKS AND TRANCE 157
consider them as a normal part of human behaviour. Re-
searchers who have studied possession cults report that it is the better
adjusted citizens who are most likely to become possessed. Many
people regard 'trance' as a sign of madness, just as they presume that
'madmen' must be easy to hypnotise. The truth is that if madmen
were capable of being under 'social control' they would never have
revealed the behaviour that categorised them as insane. It's a tautology
to say that normal people arc the most suggestible, since it's because
they're the most suggestible that they're the most normal !

If we compare Mask work with 'possession cults', then we can see
many similarities. It's true that the possessed person is often sup-
posed to remember nothing that happens during the trance — but this
is also observed sometimes in Mask work, even though it's not de-
manded. And two types of possession are often described : an am-
nesiac and a lucid state. Possessed people don't seem to need speech
lessons (which Masks do, as described later), but there are many
descriptions of inarticulate sounds preceding speech. And sometimes a
deeply possessed Mask will speak from the first moment.

Every Mask teacher will recognise this situation, reported by
Simpson of a Shango cult: 'One person said, "The drummers are not
beating well tonight." A drummer called out that "It is no use to drum
if you get no response." Later a woman stood up and shouted: "You
are not singing at all tonight." The leader appeared and denounced
the group for its lack of enthusiasm.'

Like Mask teachers, the 'priests' in possession cults are high status,
but 'indulgent' to the possessed trancers. Maya Deren describes an
incident in Haiti when someone possessed by the God Ghede*
rived at the wrong time. The Houngan (priest) objected.

Oh I just dropped in", he (Ghede) said, making a self-effacing
"to look around a bit. I'll just stroll around and look things
over." ' (Ghede then asked for nine cassavas — flat breads.) 'Ghede
stood eating two of them at once as if he was part of the audience,
and watched the great loa (spirit) Ogoun and Damballa. Then the
audience was distracted by the problem of a man who had climbed
up a tree under possession of Damballa. As the possession seemed
about to leave him the Houngan was begging Damballa to bring the
man to earth before leaving (else the man might fall and kill himself).'
Ghede then missed some of his cassavas. 'Suddenly Ghede threw a
tantrum about the thieves who had stolen his remaining cassavas.

spelt Ghede, Gheda, (Papa), Gueda, etc. by different writers.

I58 MASKS AND TRANCE

He caught hold of the Houngan and shrieked and stamped his feet,
meanwhile Damballa and Ogoun were being ignored. There was no
choice but to buy Ghede more cassavas and some biscuits to placate
him.

'Now as the loa turned to walk off with the new food, the Houngan,
smiling, said to him, "Are you sure it wasn't a man in a little multi-
coloured cap who stole those cassavas?"

'Ghede wheeled with enormous eyes of innocence. "A little cap?
What man in a little cap?" . . . Someone called out: "Are you sure
you don't know who stole your cassavas?" Whereupon, looking at us
out of the corner of his eye with a delightful and endearing expression,
Ghede winked once, slowly, and walked away.' (The Divine Horsemen,
Thames and Hudson, London, 1953; Delta Books, New York, 1970.)

Ghede, God of death, and of sexuality, is consumed by raging
hungers, but note the paradox that the supernatural creature who we
would expect to be 'super-adult' is very childlike — exactly as the
Masks arc. Ghede, in Dcren's description, sounds exactly like a Mask.

'We asked him why he liked to wear smoked glasses. "Well," he
explained, "I spend so much time in the dark underworld that it
makes my eyes sensitive to the sun." "Why", we asked then, "do you
remove the right lens so often?" "Well, my dear," he answered, "it's
this way: with my left eye, I watch over the whole universe. As for the
right, I keep that eye on my food, so that no thief will get it." '

The character of a Mask will not be like the wearer's character.
Simpson, writing of the Shango cults, says : 'My informants denied
that there is a close correspondence between the personality character-
istics of a power and his followers. Sometimes a power manifests itself
on a "child" ("horse") whose personality is the exact opposite of the
god's. A devotee may be possessed by a violent power at one time and
by a quiet power on another occasion according to the work to be

done One informant said: "What a person is afraid to do, he does

when possessed." '

My suspicion is that the number of 'personality types' that emerge
in Mask work is pretty limited. To be sure, we would have to compare
films from different cultures, and analyse the movements and sounds
of the 'spirits'. This research hasn't been carried out, but just as
myths from all over the world show similar structures, so I believe
that wherever there is a 'Pantalone-type' Mask there will be Pantalones.
The same characters persisted in the Commedia dell' Arte not because
the tradition was sterile, but because the Masks themselves imposed
certain ways of behaving. Chaplin's Tramp has always existed. Harpo,

from
medi
the
Le

MASKS AND TRANCE 1 59
and Stan Laurel, and Pappa Gueda, and Ranga the Witch, and the
Braggard Soldier, are just there, wherever there is a human brain.

I consider the possessed trance as a particular form of the hypnotic
trance. Some people have denied this, but all the phenomena typical
of possession can be induced by hypnosis. It's true that clinical
hypnosis looks very different, but that is because the hypnotist isn't
arranging a performance before an approving audience. 8 As there is
hardly any literature on Mask possession, I'll quote some examples of
spirit possession. Anyone teaching the Mask is likely at some time to
encounter deep trance states, so it's useful to understand their nature.

Here's Lucian's description of a priestess being possessed at Delphi :
'She went blundering frantically about the shrine, with the god
mounted on the nape of her neck, knocking over the tripods that stood
in her path. The hair rose on her scalp, and when she tossed her head
the wreaths went flying over the bare floor ... her mouth foamed
lziedly; she groaned, gasped, uttered weird sounds, and made the
;e cave re-echo with her dismal shrieks. In the end Apollo forced

er to intelligible speech Before her spirit could be restored to

lie light of common day, a spell of unconsciousness intervened. Apollo
was washing her mind with Lethe water, to make her forget the fate-
ful secrets she had learned during his effulgent visitation. The spirit
of divine truth departed and returned to whence it came; Phemonoe
collapsed on the floor, and was revived with difficulty.' (Translated by
Robert Graves, Pharsalia, Penguin, 1956.)

The fear, and the feeling of the god mounting on to the neck, or
head, is typical of possession as encountered in the New World cults. 7
But compare Lucan's description above with one by David G.
Mandelbaum writing of possession in a village in South India.

'A spasm of shivering works through the diviner, then another, and
his head begins to shake from side to side. The head movements con-
tinue with increasing velocity until it seems as if no human vertebrae
could stand the strain. The diviner may fall to his knees and beat
his palms against the earth with a furious tattoo, but the deity does not
speak through him until his hair is loosened. The long Kota locks are
tied up with a cord which has ritual significance, and this cord must be
dislodged by the force of the head motion. When the diviner's hair
does fall free about his oscillating head, a strangled sob bursts forth
from him — the first articulation of the god speaking through his chosen
medium. With jerky, strangled utterance, the diviner's voice serves as
the mouthpiece of the deity.' (Anthropology of Folk Religion, Charles
Leslie, i960.)

160 MASKS AND TRANCE

William Sargant has compared the possessed trance to the Pavlovian
state of 'transmarginal inhibition'. When a brain is subjected to great
stress a protective breakdown occurs : first the brain begins to give the
same response to strong as to weak signals (the grading goes), next
the brain responds more strongly to weak signals, and then conditioned
responses reverse— he cites the case of Maya Dcren as an example of
'transmarginal inhibition'. During her study of the voodoo cults in
Haiti, she became possessed herself on several occasions. Once she
arrived to film a ceremony, but 'blanked out' when the drums started,
and recovered consciousness to find that not only was the ceremony
over, but that she had conducted it herself. She says :

'The possessed benefits least of all men from his own possession.
He may suffer for it in material loss, in the sometimes painful, always
exhausted aftermath. And to the degree that his consciousness persists
into its first moments or becomes aware of it at the very end, he
experiences an overwhelming fear. Never have I seen the face of such
anguish, ordeal and blind terror as at moments when the loa comes.'

One would imagine that people would struggle to avoid this terrify-
ing experience, but it's obvious that many people desire it. It's part
of the voodoo mythology that the god should possess you 'against
your will'. I would think that Maya Deren was subject to a high level
of conflict, but it's significant that she was possessed by the beautiful,
sexy goddess Erzulie, and she did get an amazing chapter of her book.
I. M. Lewis says : 'The possessed person who in the seance is the

centre of attention says in effect, "Look at me, I am dancing"

Haitian voodoo ceremonies are quite clearly theatres, in which prob-
lems and conflicts relating to the life situations of the participants are
dramatically enacted with great symbolic force. . . . Everything takes
on the tone and character of modern psychodrama or group therapy.
Abreaction is the order of the day. Repressed urges and desires, the
idiosyncratic as well as the socially conditioned, are given full public
rein.' (Ecstatic Religion, Penguin, 1971.)

Maya Deren's first possession occurred when she was a guest of
honour at a voodoo ceremony. She was absorbed in talking to the
Houngan and wasn't attending to the drums or the singing. This
would tend to make her more vulnerable. Then she was called to take
part in the ceremony for a moment, and 'forgot' what she had to do,
even though she had done it often at previous ceremonies. What she
did 'happened' to be right and she returned to her chair, to find that
the drums and singing were louder and 'sharper'.

I would say that she was now already in fight trance. She was then

MASKS AND TRANCE l6l
caught up in the singing until she found herself 'standing bolt upright,
singing or perhaps even screaming the song'. She felt 'winded' and
took no part in the dancing.

She describes a strong feeling of being at one with the group : 'I
have but to rise, to step forward, to become a part of this glorious
movement, flowing with it, its motion becoming mine, as the roll of
the sea might become the inundation of my own body. At such mo-
ments one does not move to the sound, one is the movement of the
sound, created and borne by it; hence nothing is difficult.'

She then crosses to her servant, only to find that her leg 'roots to
the ground'. She experiences an 'unpleasant lightness in the head',
and repeats the words 'hold together' to herself. She goes outside
smokes a cigarette and feels her head 'tightening, integrating,
becoming solid once more'.

When she hears the salute to the god Odin, she 'has' to return in
order not to give offence. Had she really wanted to escape she could of
course have 'become ill'. She touches the hand of a possessed person
and feels a momentary shock like 'electricity', and other people indi-
cate to her that she is likely to become possessed. She is troubled by
her 'persistent vulnerability' and all round her people are falling into
trance. She decides to continue : 'To run away would be cowardice. I
ould resist, but I must not escape. And I can resist best, I think to
myself, if I put aside the fears and nervousness ; if, instead of suspect-
ing my vulnerability, I set myself in brazen competition with all this
would compel me to its authority.'
At some level she clearly wants to enter trance, but she believes
is being forced into it against her will. The spirits are to be fully
responsible for casting aside her personality. She's had all the warning
signals, and now she joins in the singing and the dancing and feels no
fear. She feels incredibly tired but she doesn't stop until suddenly it
Dmes easier, although she doesn't notice the exact moment at which
pace which seemed unbearably demanding had slipped down a
i into a slow motion'.
It's clear that her time sense is distorting, and that she's already
in a very odd state of consciousness. Her leg 'roots' to the ground
again. The 'slower' drums will actually be speeding up as the drum-
mers try to push her into deep trance. She sees everything as very
beautiful and she turns to a neighbour to say, 'See how lovely that is'
when she finds herself isolated, alone in a circle.

'I realise like a shaft of terror struck through me, that it is no longer
myself whom I watch. Yet it is myself, for as that terror strikes, we

fear. S
becom

l62 MASKS AND TRANCE

two are made one again, joined by and upon the point of the left leg.
The white darkness starts to shoot up; I wrench my foot free but the
effort catapults me over what seems a vast, vast distance, and I come
to rest on a firmness of arms and bodies which would hold me up. But
these have voices — great insistent, singing voices — whose sound would
smother me. With every muscle I pull loose and again plunge across a
vast space. ... My skull is a drum; each great beat drives that leg,
like the point of a stake, into the ground. The singing is at my very ear,
inside my head. This sound will drown mc! "Why don't they stop!
Why don't they stop!" I cannot wrench the leg free. I am caught in
this cylinder, this well of sound. There is nothing anywhere except
this. There is no way out. The white darkness moves up the veins of
my leg like a swift tide rising, rising; it is a great force which I cannot
sustain or contain, which surely will burst my skin. "Mercy" I
scream within me. I hear it echoed by the voices, shrill and unearthly:
"Erzulie!" The bright darkness floods up through my body, reaches
my head, engulfs me. I am sucked down and exploded at once. That is
all.'

This sounds more like the priestess at Delphi than hypnosis, but
isn't just a spectacular induction technique. Alfred Metraux observes
that 'People who are used to possession pass quickly through the
whole range of nervous symptoms, and then, suddenly, there they
are: in full trance. Even as much preamble as this may be dispensed
with when a ceremony is in full swing and demands instantaneous
entry on the part of the gods.' (Voodoo in Haiti, translated by H.
Charteris, Andre Deutsch, 1972.) He also points out that the intensity
of the attack depends on the nature of the god being incarnated. I sec
Sargent's 'transmarginal inhibition' as being just another way of
entering trance.

As for the terror that she insists on, there are many accounts of
'calm' possession, so I don't think terror is built-in' to the process, or
rather that it's the mythology that produces the terror. Interestingly
Maya Deren said elsewhere, and before ever she went to Haiti : 'Total
amnesia, although less spectacular than many other forms of mental
disorder, has always seemed to me the most terrifying.' ('An Ana-
gram of Ideas on Art', Form and Film, 1946.)

In possession cults the worshippers incarnate the gods, and their
posture, movements, and voices change as does the facial expression.
Oesterreich says: 'Transformation of the physiognomy appears in all
descriptions.' (Oesterreich also mentions an eleven-year-old girl who
began speaking in a 'deep bass voice'.) The spirits that arrive are al-

MASKS AND TRANCE 163
: always well known to the congregation, and the priest will have
: requisite costumes or props ready for them. Extended improvisa-
tions then take place which are very theatrical. Here's Jane Belo de-
; an Indonesian possession ceremony:
'The crowd that gathered was alert and attentive, the whole spirit
like that of a game in which everyone would take part. Everyone
would join in the singing which directed the trancer's performance.
People would call out jibes to the performers, urging them on, taunt-
ing them with phrases known to infuriate them. The crowd enjoyed
this very much indeed. When the time came to bring the act to an
end, a whole group would fall on the trancer, who struggled fiercely in
convulsions precipitated by the attack. Amid great excitement, every-
one would fall over everyone else in a headlong rough-and-tumble.
They would then set themselves to nursing the trancer back to normal
consciousness. All would then be just as intent on caring for the man
who was coming back to himself as they had been a few minutes
before in taunting and exciting the creature he had "become".'
(Trance in Bali, Columbia University Press, New York, i960.)
Voodoo trancers may be possessed by several different gods one
another, and the same god may inhabit several people at the
same time — in Haiti there was once a mass demonstration in which
several hundred people all possessed by Papa Gheda, marched on the
sidential palace. It's reported that voodoo trancers remember
nothing about their possessions, but Jane Belo, writing of trance in
a, describes two types of possession: one in which a 'power is
at that is different from his "I", and makes two simultaneous
integrations, and that in which there is a temporary but total change
of the personality in which the person is "transformed" into another
being or object.' (Trance in Bali.)

Here's an example of voodoo gods improvising together described
by Metraux: 'These impromptus, which vary in style, are much
appreciated by the audience, who yell with laughter, join in the
dialogue, and noisily show their pleasure or discontent. Take an
example: someone possessed by Zaka appears under the peristyle in
the get-up of a peasant. By canny movements he mimes the anxiety
of a countryman come to town, and who fears to be robbed. Now
another possessed person joins him, one might almost say 'comes on'.
It is Guede-nibo of the Guede family, which watches over the dead.
Zaka is clearly terrified by the presence of his gloomy colleague and
tries to propitiate him, inviting him to have something to eat and to
drink some rum. Guede, who is making a show as a townsman, ex-

164 MASKS AND TRANCE

changes courtesies with him, trying to tease him. He asks him: "What
have you got in your bag?" He searches it and examines the contents.
Alarmed, Zaka cries "Stop, stop!" The bag is returned to him only to
be surreptitiously lifted off him while he is examining one of the sick.
Zaka, in despair, calls for cards and shells in order to discover the
thief by means of divination. The audience chants "Play, Zaka, play".'
(And so on.) (Voodoo in Haiti.)

Any Mask teacher will recognise the scenes reported to occur
during 'possession' as typical of the Mask. One would expect the
gods to be presented as supermen, but in all 'trance' cultures we find
a mythology which describes the gods as acting in a childlike way. As
Melville says, 'The gods are like children and must be told what to
do.'

8

Teaching Mask Work

For an introductory Mask class I will set up a table
with a variety of props on it. They'll be on a table because the act of
bending down may turn a new Mask off. I avoid any props that would
present 'difficulties'. An umbrella might encourage a Mask to think
how to open it. An alarm clock might suggest winding it up. Anything
that would require a Mask to have a mental age of more than two and
a half I would remove. The objects on the table are the sort that would
interest young children. I choose things that give a variety of tactile
experiences: a scarf, a carrot, bells, silver foil, a jar, a balloon, a
piece of fur, a doll, a toy animal, a stick, rubber tubing, flowers,
sweets. Children's books are all right if they're small, and it helps if
they're in a foreign language. (My wife, Ingrid, wraps up Utile presents
for the Masks in the classes she gives ; each tiny packet has a sweet, or
a litde toy in it, which is something the Masks like.)

I put some furniture on the stage, and set up a screen to one side.
Behind the screen are hats, and coats, and pyjamas, boiler suits, and a
few dresses. If the clothes are a little out of fashion, so much the better.
Real clothes are generally better than stage costumes, though. Sheets
of coloured material are good. I used to have some big felt 'shoes' that
some Masks liked— I think they were made to fit inside gumboots in
cold weather.

Once the students are ready I change my status, and play 'high'.
I don't bounce around and wave my arms like I would for a comedy
class. I become stiller, 'serious' and more 'adult'. The change in me
produces a change of feeling in the students which I exploit by

MASKS AND TRANCE 165
assuring them that the Masks are not dangerous, that whatever hap-
pens I can handle it, and that all that matters is that they must take off
the Mask when I ask them to. The more I reassure them the more
jumpy they get, and by the time they come to take a Mask many of
them will be trembling. The skill lies in creating the correct balance
between interest and anxiety.

I also have to establish that they will not be held responsible for
their actions while in the Mask. I illustrate this with stories.

We had a Mask that had a thick droopy nose and angry eyebrows.
It was a deep, congested red in colour, and it liked to pick up sticks
and hit people. It was quite safe so long as the teacher knew this and
said 'Take the Mask off!' sharply at the critical moment. Someone
borrowed it once — Pauline Melville, who had taken over my classes at
Morley College. Next day she returned the Masks and said that some-
one had been hit on the arm. I had to explain that it was my fault for
not warning her. (And I pointed to the Mask that hit people.) I once
saw three similar droopy-nosed Masks — they were Kabuki Masks, and
they were on the hanamichi (the platform that runs through the
audience) and yes, they had sticks and were threatening people.

Another Mask was called Mr Parks. This one used to laugh, and
stare into the air, and sit on the extreme edge of chairs and fall off
sideways. Shay Gorman created the character. I took the Mask along
to a course I gave in Hampshire. The students were entering from
behind a screen and suddenly I heard Mr Parks's laughter. It entered
with the same posture Shay Gorman had adopted, and looked up as
if something was very amusing about the ceiling, and then it kept
sitting on the extreme edge of a chair as if it wanted to fall off. For-
tunately it didn't, because the wearer wasn't very athletic. It really
makes no sense that a Mask should be able to transmit that sort of
information to its wearer.

Once students begin to observe for themselves the way that Masks
compel certain sorts of behaviour, then they really begin to feel the
presence of 'spirits'. I remember a Mask I'd just made. A student tried
it out and turned into a hunched, twisted, gurgling creature. Then a
latecomer arrived, picked up the same Mask, and the identical creature
appeared. I tell students to take any Mask as long as it's comfortable.
Probably they'll be manoeuvring to pick one that they think they can
do well, but this doesn't really matter because it'll look quite different
when they see it reflected in the mirror. Once the student has found
a comfortable Mask, one that doesn't dig into his eyes, I arrange his
hair so that it covers the elastic and the top of the forehead of the Mask.

166 MASKS AND TRANCE

I then say : 'Relax. Don't think of anything. When I show you the
mirror, make your mouth fit the Mask, and hold it so that the mouth
and the Mask make one face. You'll know all about the creature in the
mirror, so you don't have to think about it. Become the thing you see,
turn away from the mirror, and go to the table. There'll be something
that it wants. Let it find it. Disobey anything I'm saying if it wants to,
but if I say "Take the Mask off", then you must take it off.'

I present the mirror very smoothly, slicing it upwards into the
space between me and the actor. The shock of seeing the reflection
is to be as strong as possible. After two seconds I begin to step aside,
swinging the mirror with me, so that the actor will automatically
take a step, and will be facing the table with the props as the mirror
leaves him. If the actor seems to be resisting the change I might say
'You're changing now', or 'Make the face fit the Mask.' I use a head-
sized mirror because the information they need comes from the face.
If the mirror is bigger, then they see their whole body and are likely
to start posturing. I don't want them to think about being another
creature, I want them to experience being another creature. 8

Some students will compulsively touch their Mask as soon as they
see their reflection. This is a defence : they want to reassure themselves
that it's 'only a mask'. If students seem seriously afraid then I tell
them to cross their fingers or something. Once they accept such a
method of keeping themselves 'safe' they've already entered a 'magical
universe'. When they agree to uncross their fingers or whatever, the
effects of the Mask will be even stronger. In possession cults you can
protect yourself by clinging to the beams or 'tying knots in your
underwear'. Some students go rigid, and then remove the Mask,
visibly shaken, and say 'Nothing happened.' Other students 'think out'
what to do, and then hop around pretending to be boxers, or posture
like Harlequins or whatever. 'Don't have any words in your head', I say.

When a student tries on a Mask for the second time I may say
'When you look in the mirror let the Mask m£.ke a sound, and keep
the sound going all through the scene.' This is a meditation technique
very effective in blocking verbalisation (like Tibetan monks chanting
'Oooooommmmm'). I often say things like 'Yes, that's excellent', or
'Who is it?' or 'Amazing' even before students have looked in the
mirror, so that the feeling of being different, and hidden, is reinforced.
The Masks begin to pant, and wheeze, and howl, which freaks out the
people watching even more, and 'pumps the atmosphere up'. In
voodoo cults the drums throb for hours to call the gods across the
ocean from Africa.

MASKS AND TRANCE 167
Once one person is possessed, others usually follow almost im-
mediately. In a beginners' Mask class there is usually a 'dead' twenty
minutes before the first Mask appears — if you're lucky. My method
is to 'seed' the class with a fully developed Mask. The presence of a
'possessed' Mask allows students to 'let go', and alarms and reassures
at the same time. The same phenomenon is reported in possession
cults; and it's easier to hypnotise someone who has just seen it done
to someone else.

I encourage students to throw themselves in, and to stop being
'critical', by saying: 'Make mistakes! These Masks are more extreme,
more powerful than ordinary faces ! Don't be timid. Make big mis-
takes. Don't worry about being wrong ! Rely on me to stop you !' Some-
times I say: 'What you saw in the mirror was right] But you only
showed me a shadow of it. Try the Mask again. You'll never get any-
where if you aren't brave.' Sometimes I see that a person is trans-
formed for just a moment as they look in a mirror, but then take hold
of themselves to cancel it out. I stop them, make them remove the
Mask and then start again immediately.

A girl puts on a Mask and is transformed. She seems to illuminate
the room, but instantly she removes it.

'Be gentle with the Mask,' I say. When people feel that the Mask
has made them betray themselves they'll throw it down. I've seen one
hurled from centre stage to the back of the stalls. In the present case
my warning reinforces the feeling that unexpected and violent things
may happen.

'I couldn't do it,' she says.

'But it was marvellous.'

'It felt wrong.'

'You mean you didn't like the thing you had turned into.'
'That's right.'

'That means you can do it, the experience was real.'
I reassure her, and let her watch and see that no one is coming to
harm.

The problem is not one of getting the students to experience the
'presence' of another personality — almost everyone gets a strong kick
from their reflection—the difficulty lies in stopping the student from
making the change 'himself'. There's no reason for the student to
start 'thinking' when he already 'knows' intuitively exactly what sort
of creature he is. Getting him to hold his mouth in a fixed position,
and having him make sounds helps to block verbalisation, and
'finding a prop' helps to tear the Mask away from the mirror. Un-

168 MASKS AND TRANCE

fortunately, even the effort of walking may throw the actor into
normal consciousness. That's why I hold the mirror near the table
(less than eight feet), and in extreme cases I start the Mask at the
table, or sitting in a chair.

A new Mask is like a baby that knows nothing about the world.
Everything looks astounding to it, and it has little access to its wearer's
skills. Very often a Mask will have to learn how to sit, or bend down,
or how to hold things. It's as if you build up another personality from
scratch; it's as if a part of the mind gets separated, and then develops
on its own. There are exceptions, but in most cases the very best
Masks start off knowing the least. They don't know how to take the
lids off jars; they don't understand the idea of wrapping things (given
a present they just admire the paper). When objects fall to the floor it's
as if they've ceased to exist. One student always left the room before
wearing a particularly regressive Mask. I asked her why, and she said,
'It's silly, but I'm afraid I might wet myself, so I always go to the
toilet.'

Normal Masks go through a period of learning, so that after a dozen
or so classes they have a limited vocabulary, a number of 'props' that
they regularly handle, and some sort of history based on interactions
with other Masks. A Mask that grabs everything will have learned
that the other Masks will punish it, and so on. Actors who 'can't do'
Mask work are never able to let the Mask be truly stupid and ignorant.
They try to transfer their own skills directly. Instead of allowing a
Mask to explore a closed umbrella they'll 'take over' and open it.
Instead of letting the Mask suffer because it hasn't learned to sit in a
chair they'll 'make' it sit. By their impatience, and desire to exert
control, they bypass a necessary process. The Mask feeling leaks
away and we are left with the actor pretending to be another person,
instead of being another person.

Some Masks are 'muscle-bound', and act like 'monsters'. I don't
encourage these unless they're all an actor can produce. The most
important thing is that an actor should dredge up some sort of 'spirit',
but I prefer Masks that release the actor physically and vocally. I
encourage Masks that are 'human', like big extrovert children, or
expressive of very intense feelings: greed, lust, or tenderness, for
example. As soon as a Mask arrives that seems useful I get the actor
to repeat it. I say, 'Tell yourself you're looking in the mirror for the
first time, the Mask will do the rest.' This stops the actor from trying
to remember what the Mask did 'last time'.

Soon there are a number of recognisable 'personalities' that I can

MASKS AND TRANCE 169
put together in scenes. I usually tell each Mask that it owns all the
props, and that it's going to meet some nice people. At first Masks are
often rather grotesque, very depressed or manic— and sometimes
frightening. Interacting socialises them. They make friends and
enemies. We now have a community of Masks, each with its own
costume, props, and personal history.

They probably still don't speak — and the inability to speak is almost
a sign of good Mask work. Actors are amazed to find that it's neces-
sary to give the Masks 'speech lessons'. Masks usually understand
words said to them, but they have the comprehension of a young child.
Long words are ignored, or produce bewilderment.

I set up a scene in which the Mask is to meet a 'very nice voice
teacher'. I collect the props that I think will interest the Mask, and I
get someone to stay close to it with a mirror.

'Come.in', I say. 'Sit?"

It looks baffled.

'Sit,' I say, and I sit on a chair. If it 'catches on' it'll imitate me and
probably make some sort of sound. 'Stand,' I say, and we play
'sitting and standing' like two idiots. Then I give the Mask a present,
perhaps a balloon. 'Balloon,' I say, and if it doesn't want it, or won't
say the word, I don't pressure it. If it likes the balloon, I say 'Yellow
balloon' or whatever. Whenever the Mask begins to turn off, it gets a
recharge from the mirror, and I keep well back, and hand it things at
arm's length. If I get too close to it I'll probably turn it off. I have to
be careful not to invade the Mask's 'space', although proximity
between Masks will deepen their trance.

When other people act as voice teachers they usually want to bully
the Masks. I suppose this comes from the way we treat young children.
They touch the Masks; they try to blackmail them into speaking,
refusing to give them presents until they obey. If a word is said, the
'teachers' try frantically to get the pronunciation exactly right. Then
the Mask suffers and won't co-operate.

By far the best way is to have one Mask that already speaks work
as teacher. Such Masks often express annoyance at their pupils'
'stupidity', but there's something very magical in removing the human
being from the process so that the Masks hand on their own traditions.
Masks can even hold the mirrors.

I'm happy if I get three sounds which resemble words in a five-
minute session. Many words can't be said at the beginning because
of the way the mouth is being held. Three words is a great achieve-
ment. Once the Mask has learned a dozen or so words it begins to

170 MASKS AND TRANCE

transfer words from its wearer's vocabulary, or to pick them up from
other Masks.

Speech lessons sound silly, but remember Chaplin, who never
really found the right voice for his Tramp. He made many experiments
and finally made him sing in gibberish (Modern Times). 'Charlie'
always sounds like Chaplin when he talks, and I think Chaplin knew
this, and this is probably why he abandoned the character. If he'd
been able to work in a Mask class he'd almost certainly have been able
to find a voice.

An actor may develop several Masks, each with its own character-
istics and vocabulary. If I use an unfamiliar word to a Mask it'll ask me
what it means, and it'll always remember that word. What is freaky is
that each Mask remembers what it knows, and also what it doesn't
know. An actor left the Studio just when his Mask was learning to
speak. After two years he returned, and started another speech lesson,
and he was using exactly the vocabulary he had learned at the previous
class. Hypnotic subjects are reported to be in rapport with all the
other occasions when they were in trance, and the same is true of Mask
characters.

I speed up the learning of words by getting the Masks to count up
to ten, or to say the alphabet. Nursery rhymes are useful. I get Masks
to recite little poems to the audience who applaud wildly. One
nursery rhyme can teach so many words that the Mask goes straight
into simple speech.

Here are some notes by Mask students on what the Mask state feels

like.

T found that the inability to speak was the freakiest feeling, com-
bined with a feeling of being on an energetic high, and having a total
disregard for the audience. Colours seemed to deepen in intensity,
and objects became possessions. The terrible feeling of having to
succeed in front of people faded into the background, and body move-
ments lost their stiffness and inhibitions. Sounds came unplanned to
my throat.

'Once out of the Mask I find I am exhausted emotionally and
physically, and cannot resume the Mask for a while without a rest.
As an improviser I am nervous about appearing 'right', but once in a
Mask, there's no such feeling and the Mask can improvise indefi-
nitely (if happy).'

This student was an experienced amateur actress, and had learned
an untruthful but effective way of presenting herself, based on strong
'demonstrations of feeling'. She was very 'armoured' against the

MASKS AND TRANCE 171
audience, but in Mask work she was 'released', and seemed wonder-
fully gifted. My suspicion is that her extreme exhaustion may have
been linked to residual anxieties about 'letting go'. I worked with her
for a year, mosdy on improvisation, and she was just beginning to
transfer her Mask skills into her acting skills. With luck she should be

out of the cul-de-sac.

Another student writes :

T always come away from a Mask class with a feeling of renewed
eshness, a light feeling.

T like the Mask state very much — I guess you could say it acts on
me the way some drugs would affect other people — an escape perhaps?

'My sense of touch and sound are increased, I want to touch and
feel everything, loud sounds don't bother me. Colours are much
brighter and more meaningful— I am more aware of them.
'Something happens to my eyes.
'A childlike sense of discovery.

'As a Mask there are a lot of things that can do a lot of harm — being
hit — seeing someone else take their Mask off ... a sense of failure
during a Mask class. Maybe when I say harm I don't mean physically
— but mentally it boggles the mind a lot — because you are literally a
young child open to all the world will offer and the first experience is
usually the lasting one.

'I feel much happier with myself as an actor now— because I have
had some Mask training — can I tell why I feel better? I don't know. I
just have a lot more confidence. I feel 'right' in the Mask state, what-
ever I do is fine, no emotional hangups.

'It's hard for me to take a Mask off that has worked for a long period
of time successfully — once when I did take it off, I felt my face was
being ripped off with it.'
A third student writes :

'When I had my first successful speech lesson, I felt that I knew
how to say the words but the Mask didn't. A part of me knew how,
and a part of me did not. The latter part was much the stronger of
the two and maintained control without a struggle. . . .

'Masks do not like to pretend. In order to do the scene where the
Mask enters from outdoors, I had to go out to the hall door and then
come in. On the other hand it was easy for her (the Mask) to pretend
that Ingrid's purse was a tea-cosy because she had no idea what a
tea-cosy was.'

I remember some rather staid Swedish schoolteachers being let
loose in a garden wearing Masks that they had 1

172 MASKS AND TRANCE

They shrieked with delight, raced over the flower beds and started
tearing up the flowers. I stopped the scene, and found some of them
very upset, since they'd never have imagined themselves behaving in
such a way.

Students are likely to have vivid dreams when they begin Mask
work. One very gifted student found himself sleepwalking for the
first time in years. A Canadian student was trying a Mask on at home
and went out into his garden wearing it when the temperature was
minus twenty Centigrade. He was astounded to find that he was stand-
ing in the snow in his bare feet. Masks are very strange and should
be approached with caution, not because they're really dangerous,
but because a bad experience may put a teacher or student off for
good.

At the moments when a Mask 'works' the student feel a decision-
lessness, and an inevitability. The teacher sees a sudden 'naturalness',
and that the student is no longer 'acting'. At first the Mask may flash
on for just a couple of seconds. I have to see and explain exactly when
the change occurs. The two states are actually very different, but
most students are insensitive to changes in consciousness. Some
students hold rigidly to 'normal consciousness', but most keep switch-
ing from their control to the Mask's control and back again. It be-
comes possible to say 'The mask switched off when you touched the
table', or 'It flashed on for a second when you saw the other Mask.'
Once a student understands the immense difference between con-
trolling a Mask and being controlled by a Mask, then he can be taught.
It doesn't matter if he loses the Mask state a couple of seconds after
leaving the mirror, because once he understands the point at which
the change occurs, the trance state can be extended. The essential
thing is to identify the two sensations: (i) the student working the
Mask, which we don't want; (2) the Mask working the student, a
state which the student learns to sustain.

When the actors have developed one or two characters, and have
learned to sustain them, I push them into playing more complex
situations. There's a sort of 'hump' you have to get them over. I invent
the sort of situations that a three-year-old would respond to: playing
'shop', stealing, being shouted at by angry grown-ups, and so on. I
also set up 'marathon' scenes in which the Masks interrelate for a
long time— up to an hour. If someone turns off they can get a 're-
charge' from the mirror, or they can rejoin the audience. More Masks
arrive as other Masks leave. Once this stage is reached, then the Masks
function as entertainers. You put Masks together and enjoy the scenes

MASKS AND TRANCE 173
that emerge. They have their own 'world', and it's fascinating to watch
them exploring it.

In normal life the personality conceals or checks impulses. Mask
characters work on the opposite principle : they are childlike, impuls-
ive, open; their machinations are completely transparent to the
audience, although not necessarily to each other. If you look at, say,
the adults on a bus, you can see that they work to express a 'deadness'.

If Masks were subjected to the same pressures as our children are,
then they also would become dull and inexpressive. We adults have
learned to be opaque. We live among hard surfaces that reflect sound
back to us, so we're constantiy telling our children to be quiet. Our
lives are surrounded with precious objects— glass, china, televisions,
stereos — so that movement has to be restrained. Any adult who acted
like a three-year-old would be intolerable to us.

John Holt made this point when discussing the 'wooden' look of
retarded children (in How Children Fail.) A fourteen-year-old with a
mental age of six doesn't 'act six' because we won't let him, but he
can't 'act fourteen' either, so he looks stupid as a defence. A child of
one and a half can look bright and alert, but an adult with a mental
age of ten has to look like a moron because this is the most acceptable
persona he's able to assemble. When Veronica Sherbourne allows re-
tarded children to behave spontaneously, we see at once that the
deadness was only a cloak, a crippling disguise, yet we 'normal' people
are wooden and inexpressive compared to the Masks.

This is why Mask teachers or the priests at possession ceremonies
are so indulgent. When Masks are set free among a crowd they are
permitted all sorts of behaviour which would be instantly forbidden to
normal people. 9

One famous French teacher of the Mask — who won't approve of
this essay — divides students immediately into those who can work
Masks and those who can't. I think this is damaging. One of my best
improvisers (Anthony Trent) spent eight weeks working very hard
until a Mask possessed him. Whether a student can succeed or not
depends partly on the skill of the teacher, and the incentive of the
student. When I began teaching I thought that only about one in ten
of my students could really 'become the Mask'. Recendy I created a
Mask play with a company of actors, and because they had to succeed,
everyone did— to some extent. Where possession is the norm (at least
in the West Indies and Indonesia), there are always some people who
don't become possessed. Maybe these just don't have sufficient in-
centive.

174 MASKS AND TRANCE

The great improvement in my Mask teaching came when I thought
of having people standing by to present mirrors during the scenes. The
moment the Mask actor 'comes to himself' he snaps a finger and maybe
two or three mirrors are rushed at him. This makes the learning pro-
cess much easier. Masks can also have little mirrors in their pockets to
turn themselves back on.

Mask work is particularly suitable for 'tough' adolescents who may-
normally think of drama as sissy. It appeals to them because it feels
dangerous. I've seen excellent, and very sensitive Mask work by
rather violent teenagers. Personally I think Mask work is something
almost anyone can learn to enjoy. It's very refreshing to be able to
shed the personality thrust on you by other people.

9

The Waif

I'll consider one particular Mask in more detail. This
is 'the Waif' and it was made almost as a joke. I had smeared plasticine
over a wig stand to serve as a base for further modelling. Then I
stuck on three bits of plasticine, two circles and a lump, so that it had
a nose and eyes. The result looked very 'alive'. I decided that this
'joke' was worth making into a Mask— a decision which the people
around me objected to, so I knew there must be something rather
disturbing about this particular face. When the layers of paper were
dry I painted it bluish grey, with a white nose and white protruding
eyes.

My wife Ingrid tried out the Mask and created a 'lost child'
character, very nervous and wondering. Everyone became very fond of
it. We turned it on in a garden once and it said everything seemed to
be 'burning'. It seemed to see the world in a visionary manner. Ingrid
and I both kept notes on it. Here are some of mine.

'When first created it looked at everything as if amazed. It made
"cor!" and "ooooooooorh" noises. It covers Ingrid's top lip, which
makes Ingrid's mouth form a strange shape, as if her own top lip were
fixed to the Mask.

'I gave the Waif an ice cream on a stick. She tried to eat the paper.
I took the paper off and showed her how to hold it. She held it by the
chocolate coating. I explained again and she held the stick. She didn't
wipe or lick the chocolate from her hand, she didn't seem to know
there was a sticky mess on it.

'The Waif has a strong rapport with me, so I play scenes with her.

MASKS AND TRANCE 175
I am sweeping when she enters the acting area. She asks what I am
doing. I say "sweeping", and offer her the broom. She takes the broom
and holds it as if it was a baby. She hugs it as if it were alive, and
nothing to do with sweeping. When she leaves she takes it with her
and says "sweep" as if that were the broom's name.

'I have used the Waif to civilise the violent Mask. This is an
incredibly violent old man who picks up sticks and threatens to hit
people. The Waif seems to be about four years old, so I set up a scene
in which she was to arrive as his granddaughter. Everything the Waif
touches she treats as someone else's, so I told the 'grandfather' that he
was to tell her not to touch anything, and then leave. There was a
teddy bear on the table. The Waif entered nervously holding a Utile
suitcase, and was fascinated by the teddy bear. Granddad was gruff
with her, and left. She picked up the teddy bear, and Granddad came
back enraged and hit her (not hard). The Waif was appalled. Since
this time the two Masks have almost become inseparable, and
Granddad is now very protective, and interacts well with other Masks.'

Here are some notes on the Waif by Ingrid:

'I get very high on Mask work — it's like stepping out of my skin
and experiencing something much more fluid and dynamic — some-
times when the Mask is turned on there is a part of me sitting in a dist-
ant corner of my mind that watches and notices changed body sensa-
tions, emotions, etc. But it's very passive, this watcher — does nothing
that criticises or interferes — and sometimes it's not there at all. Then
it's like the "I" blanks out and "something else" steps in and experi-
ences. When Ingrid switches back she can't always remember what
that something else did or experienced. But while I am the Mask I
experience it, or rather the Mask experiences itself like I do myself . . .
only the way the Mask experiences itself is more intense. Things are
more alive. The universe becomes magical — the body full of sensations.
I suppose this is where the "high" comes from

'It's like you get the freedom to explore all the personalities that
any human being may develop into — all the shapes and feelings that
could have been Ingrid but aren't. Some Masks don't trigger any re-
sponse . . . maybe these are spirits outside Ingrid's repertoire, that is
any one person may have a limited number of possibilities when he
develops his personality. Most of the time it's like becoming a child
again, but some Masks feel very adult even though their knowledge
is limited. With the Waif I feel a distinct maturing process ... she
now feels like a thirteen-to-fourteen-year-old; at first she felt six or
seven years old.'

I76 MASKS AND TRANCE

Ingrid found that the Mask work helped her development as an
improviser. At first, she says, she was 'extremely cautious and afraid
of appearing in front of the class, and I couldn't bear being out in
situations that made me appear vulnerable. The Waif had none of
these qualities. She wasn't afraid to feel the emotions that came. She
didn't really care about or notice the audience; also she is much freer
in her relations with other Masks than Ingrid is with other people. I
suppose for these reasons it was very nice for me to slip into this other
creature and experience things I normally avoided or hadn't ex-
perienced since childhood. It was a tremendous release— like a
marvellous kind of therapy, because the feeling of release would still
be with me after I'd taken off the Mask. However, I could still never
have done all those things without the Mask on.'

If we wanted to be analytical we could say that the flatness of the
Mask, and its high forehead, are likely to trigger parental feelings.
The eyes are very wide apart as if looking into the distance, and help-
ing to give it its wondering look. Where the bottom of the Mask
covers the wearer's top lip, a faint orange Up is painted onto the Mask.
Everyone who has created a 'Waif' character with the Mask has lined
their lip up with the Mask's, and then held it frozen. I wrote my play
The Last Bird for this Mask, and the Danish actress Karen-lis
Ahrenkiel played the role in the Aarhus production. It was only when
she froze her top lip in this way that she suddenly found the character.
The eyes of the Mask aren't level, which gives a lopsided feeling, and
is probably the cause of the characteristic twisting movements that
the Waif always has.

10

Executioners, 'Noses' and 'Men'

Another type of character Mask is the Executioner.
This is a figure I resurrected from my childhood for a children's play,
The Defeat of Giant Big-Nose. The actors wear dark clothes and soft
black leather helmets which mould to the head and expose only the
mouth and chin. Black tapes are sewn on so that they can be tied —
which they never are, but the tapes help the brutal feeling and draw
attention to the chin. Each actor cuts his own eye-holes, making them
as small as possible. Only a glint of an eye is occasionally visible. If
necessary pinpricks can be made around the hole, but the constriction
of vision helps the actor to feel 'different'.

To work this Mask you face another Executioner, and hold a grim-

MASKS AND TRANCE 177

ace that shows both sets of teeth. You must never entirely lose this
grimace. With it you can speak 'in character' — the voice has a threaten-
ing roughness— and it releases very brutal feelings in the body. You
feel aggressive, powerful and wide. If you expose both sets of teeth
you're bound to sense yourself differently. Try it now : grimace and
look round the room, move about and try and sense the differences.
Some people who find it impossible to work the half masks break
through after working Executioner Masks. Women never look 'right'
as Executioners, but the grimace also releases strong feelings in them.

'Noses' may be a 'way in' for some students. You need a long,
pointed red nose held on by elastic, and a fluffy wig or soft hat. You
then climb into a large sack or wrap a sheet round you — white seems
to be preferred— and make yourself into a sort of tube that takes little
steps and skips about. You place all your attention on the nose and
hold it there, and then you face another 'Nose' and you both jabber
in high-pitched gibberish, holding wide grins. 'Noses' are maniacally
happy, move very quickly, and never do what they are told. They can
be controlled by telling them to do the opposite of what you want
them to do. They prefer to work in pairs, often turning each other
on again by 'mirroring' each other for a moment. Very soon the high-
pitched gibberish begins to throw up words, but they always jabber a
lot. When they're really turned on they're amazing. The red noses
seem to be pulling them around.

Executioners and 'Noses' are likely to be hindered if they use
mirrors. It's much better, in the early stages, if they just use each
other. Later on, mirrors can be useful.

'Men' are plastic commercial masks which are just round eyes,
round noses and little moustaches — you see through the pupils of
the 'eyes'. The actors wear overalls and soft hats. They use each other
as mirrors and raise their hats to each other — straight up and down.
They grin all the time, keep their elbows in to their sides as much as
possible, and take short steps. They speak in gibberish, which soon
gives way to language. With luck very real characters will suddenly
emerge, and the actors will suddenly 'know' what to do, instead of

II

Pre-Mask Exercises

Most of my 'acting theory' comes from my study of
the Mask, and there are many acting exercises that can be used as pre-
Mask exercises. Here are some of them.

178 MASKS AND TRANCE

Face Masks

Face Masks probably go back at least to Copeau. I sit
four actors on a bench, show them a mirror and say 'Make a face,
nothing like your face, hold it, don't lose the expression.' The audience
laugh at the transformation, but the actors don't feel that 'they' are
being laughed at. 'Get up,' I say, 'shake hands with each other, say
something.' Most actors find that their bodies move in a quite differ-
ent way, but some hold on to themselves and 'insert a barrier' in
the neck, so that the changes in the face can't effect the posture of the
body. It's easy to draw gentle attention to this, and to encourage the
actors to let their bodies 'do what they want to do'. The actors then
play scenes while holding faces that express some sort of emotion. The
greater the emotion expressed on the face the greater the change in
behaviour and the easier it is to improvise. I use the Face Mask as a
rehearsal technique. Actors pick faces at random and then play the
text. They often get insights into the nature of the scene in this way,
and they lose their fear of overacting, which makes many actors appear
inhibited.

If all the actors hold an identical face, then they accept each other's
ideas more readily.

Some students 'can't' make a face. They'll change expression just
a little, desperately clinging on to their self-image. You can overcome
this by asking them to make an emotional sound, and then hold the
face that accompanies it. If you snarl, the face automatically becomes
savage.

It's a simple step from the Face Mask to Executioner Masks or
'Noses' even for very uptight people.

Placing the Mind

The placing of the personality in a particular part of
the body is cultural. Most Europeans place themselves in the head,
because they have been taught that they are the brain. In reality of
course the brain can't feel the concave of the skull, and if we believed
with Lucretius that the brain was an organ for cooling the blood, we
would place ourselves somewhere else. The Greeks and Romans were
in the chest, the Japanese a hand's breath below the navel, Witla
Indians in the whole body, and even outside it. We only imagine
ourselves as 'somewhere'.

Meditation teachers in the East have asked their students to
practise placing the mind in different parts of the body, or in the

MASKS AND TRANCE 179
Universe, as a means of inducing trance. The author of The Cloud of
Unknowing writes 'Where do I want you to be? Nowhere!' 10 Michael
Chekhov, a distinguished acting teacher (and friend of Vakhtangov)
suggested that students should practise moving the mind around as an
aid to character work. He suggested that they should invent 'imaginary
bodies' and operate them from 'imaginary centres'. He writes :

'You are going to imagine that in the same space you occupy with
your own, real body there exists another body — the imaginary body of
your character . . . you clothe yourself, as it were, with this body; you
put it on like a garment. What will be the result of this "masquerade"?
After a while (or perhaps in a flash!) you will begin to feel and think of
yourself as another person. . . .

'Your whole being, psychologically and physically, will be changed —
I would not hesitate to say even possessed — by the character . . . your
reasoning mind, however skilful it may be, is apt to leave you cold
and passive, whereas the imaginary body has the power to appeal
directly to your will and feelings.' (To the Actor, Harper and Row,
I953-)

I suggest that you try out Chekov's suggestion. The effects are
very strong, and students are amazed at the feelings created in them.
Chekov says:

'So long as the centre remains in the middle of your chest (pretend
it's a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in
full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with
your body approaching an "ideal type". But as soon as you try to shift
the centre to some other place within or outside your body, you will
feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change,
just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body. You will
notice that the centre is able to draw and concentrate your whole being
into one spot from which your activity emanates and radiates.

'Try a few experiments for a while. Put a soft, warm, not too
small centre in the region of your abdomen and you may experience a
psychology that is self-satisfied, earthy, a bit heavy and even humor-
ous. Place a tiny, hard centre on the tip of your nose and you will
become curious, inquisitive, prying and even meddlesome. Move the
centre to one of your eyes and notice how quickly it seems that you
have become sly, cunning and perhaps hypocritical. Imagine a big,
heavy, dull and sloppy centre placed outside the seat of your pants and
you have a cowardly, not too honest, droll character. A centre located
a few feet outside your eyes or forehead may invoke the sensation of
a sharp, penetrating and even a sagacious mind. A warm, hot and even

180 MASKS AND TRANCE

fiery centre situated without your heart may awaken in you heroic,
loving and courageous feelings.

'You can also imagine a movable centre. Let it sway slowly before
your forehead and circle your head from time to time, and you will
sense the psychology of a bewildered person; or let it circle irregularly
around your whole body, in varying tempos, now going up and now
sinking down, and the effect will no doubt be one of intoxication.'

I find it sad that Chekov's work is not continued by more teachers.
Few actors have really tried it out. In rehearsal it's sometimes been
perfect for helping an actor to find a 'character'. And its relation to
Mask work is obvious.

Costume

I ask the actors to dress up as characters. Most put on
too many clothes. It's quite normal for a student to wear three hats at
once, believing himself 'original'. I encourage them to take fewer
articles.

A girl puts on a pink tutu. She wears a bus conductor's hat, the
peak low over her eyes, and one shoe. As soon as she moves she as-
sumes an aggressive posture, like an angry child. She stops instandy
and starts to remove the costume. I say, 'You felt something!' She
replies, 'It was too childish.' I tell her to stop criticising, and to keep
any costume that makes her feel different. She improvises a scene
with the costume on and she's very confident, most unlike her usual
timid self.

Someone wears a boiler suit stuffed with balloons to make him
'huge'. He still looks 'himself'. I say, 'Move and imagine that the
costume is your body surface', and suddenly he becomes a 'fat man'.

Pretending that the costume is the actual body surface has a
powerful transforming effect on most people. We all of us have a 'body
image' which may not be at all the same as our actual body. Some
people imagine themselves as a blob with bits sticking out, and others
have a finely articulated body image. Sometimes a person who has
slimmed will still have, visibly, a 'fat' body image.

Once students have found transforming costumes I set them to play
scenes in gibberish, and later in speech.

Animals

If the class act as animals, playing together or clawing
at each other, or 'mating', very regressed states occur. Playing different
animals develops movement and voice skills, but it may also unlock

MASKS AND TRANCE l8l
other personalities. I gradually turn the animals into 'people'. I got
this idea from Vernon Hickling, one of my first teaching colleagues in
Battersea, but the idea is ancient.

Toddlers

I read that small children don't punch each other, but
'pat', and that the child with the hand nearest the head loses the
confrontations. I taught this at first as a status exercise. But sometimes
the result was that the whole class were romping about like big
children.

Being Handled

Trance states are likely whenever you abandon control
of the musculature. Many people can get an incredible 'high' from
being moved about while they remain relaxed. Pass them round a
circle, lift them, and (especially) roll them about on a soft surface. For
some people' it's very liberating, but the movers have to be skilled.

12
Text

Scholars have advanced many reasons for the use of
Masks by the players of the Commedia dell' Arte, but they miss the
obvious one — that Masks improvise for hours, in an effortless way. It's
difficult to 'act' a Commedia scenario at any high level of achievement.
Masks take to it like ducks to water.

Masks don't fit so well into 'normal' theatre, unless the director
understands their problems. The technique of 'blocking' the moves
has to be abandoned, since at first the Masks move where they want
to, and it's no use getting the designer to work out which Masks are to
represent which characters.

The biggest problem is that the Masks refuse to repeat scenes. Even
when you tell them they are going to take part in a play, they insist on
being spontaneous. If you force them to act in plays, then they switch
off, and you are left with the actors pretending to be Masks.

I now rehearse the Masks away from the text, letting them play
scenes together, and trying to find a Mask that will more or less fit
the dialogue. At the same time I rehearse the actor on the text, but
I don't set the moves, and I'm mainly concerned that he should
understand it, and learn it.

When I decide it's time to put the Masks on to the text, I choose a
scene, and I tell the Masks they're going to act in a play. I stand by

182 MASKS AND TRANCE

the mirror and feed the first fine to the Mask as it sees its reflection.
It then turns away from the mirror, says its fine, and maybe proceeds
to the next fine. I keep showing it the mirror as I feed it lines, and
after about half a page we stop and rest. For the actor it will probably
have been an amazing experience. Everything suddenly becomes 'real'
and the Mask has quite different reactions from those he'd intended.

When they come to repeat the scene it's very important to say,
'Tell yourself that this has never happened to you before.' Everything is
then OK. Until I learned this last trick the whole business of getting
fully possessed Masks to function on text seemed insoluble.

With this technique you can use Masks almost like actors. It's a
little different, because of course the Masks only know what they have
'learned' or managed to 'transfer' from the skills of the wearer. If a
stranger enters the rehearsal room all work will stop while the Masks
turn to look at him. If a staircase is suddenly introduced the Masks
may stop in amazement and you realise that they've never met the
concept of another level before. My play The Last Bird was written for
a mixture of Masks and people. In one rehearsal of the Copenhagen
production, the Mask actors suddenly removed the Masks and rolled
on the floor in hysterical laughter. The script said the Masks were to
make bird noises, and their lips had absolutely refused to 'whistle'. I
had to give a 'bird noise' lesson; even so, they never became very good
at it.

If you are not happy with the Masks — that is if they seem miscast —
you can change everything by running the scene with other Masks.
Everything will now alter, and the 'truths' of the scene will be different.
In the case of The Last Bird, which was written for two Masks already
created (Grandfather and the Waif), the original Grandfather mask
never worked. Finally we used a commercial plastic 'old man' mask.

Masks aren't 'pretending', they actually undergo the experiences. I
remember an actress whom I asked to approach a man lying in a
'wood' to ask him the way. The class were impressed and said her
performance was very truthful. Then I asked her to repeat the exer-
cise as a Mask, and everything was transformed. The Mask was afraid
of being in the 'wood'. It thought the man must be dead and was terri-
fied to go near him.

In The Last Bird, Death was to reap the Grandfather. It was a 'good'
scene, and the actors were working well. But when we tried the scene
with the Mask, Grandfather stopped doing anything one could recog-
nise as 'acting' and stared transfixed at the point of the scythe. It was
just cardboard with aluminium foil covering it, but suddenly it seemed

MASKS AND TRANCE 183
the most terrible instrument in the universe. Dick Kajsor, who was
playing Death, backed off. T can't kill him,' he said, very upset, as we
all were. It took about an hour before we could try the scene again.

When I directed the second production of the play (at Aarhus)
everything was fine until we added the Masks. Then the actors were
appalled. It seemed impossible that they were to present this play
night after night when it disturbed them so much. The play is about
a colonial war, and what had been a game became a monstrous
reality. Tragedy is horrible when you really experience it. Olivier has
been reported as saying he doesn't want to do any more of the great
tragic roles because it's too painful— he'd rather play comedy.

In the first production Birthe Neumann 'found' the Waif almost im-
mediately. In the Aarhus production Karen-lis Ahrenkiel could turn
the Waif on, but the thing wouldn't speak. It seemed desperately
unhappy, and thrashed its arms around and howled, and didn't want
anything to do with the text. It was eerie. It was as if it had a deter-
mination not to do the play because it knew the terrible things that
were to happen to it— Grandfather dies, the Waif is raped by the
Executioners, the wings are sawn off the Angel, Jesus sinks when he
tries to walk on the water, and so on. When we had finally coaxed and
lured the Waif into performing the part (and at one time I thought I'd
have to cast someone else), it was a very emotional time. Tears and
mucus would pour out of the nose holes. Even in performance you
would hear it howling as it groped off stage during the blackouts.
Directed with actors, the play would have lost some of this raw emo-
tion. With Masks it seemed almost cruel to show it to an audience who
might be expecting museum theatre.

One of the strangest paradoxes about the Mask is that the actor who
is magnificent wearing it may be colourless and unconvincing when
he isn't. This is something obvious to everyone, including the actor
himself. In the Mask events really happen. The wearers experience
everything with great vividness. Without the Mask they perpetually
judge themselves. In time the Mask abilities spill over into the acting,
but it's a very gradual process.

My methods make it relatively easy to put character Masks into
plays, but you won't see good Mask work in the theatre very often.
Usually the Masks arrive with the costumes — just in time for the dress
rehearsal, and the actor is expected to wear the Mask designed for him
irrespective of whether it turns him on or not. In my Mask productions
I begin rehearsing with fifty or sixty Masks and let the actors discover
which ones fit the roles in the play. My designers work with the

184 MASKS AND TRANCE

actors and assemble the costumes to the Mask's tastes. I've even
taken the Masks out shopping to choose their costumes in department
stores— which creates some odd scenes. I don't cast an actor to play a
Masked role until I know he has the ability to become 'possessed'. If
necessary I rewrite scenes to fit in with the Mask's requirements. The
depth of possession during performance depends on the freedom with
which mirrors are used. In my productions there are usually mirrors
on stage, and people standing by to present a mirror if a Mask snaps
its fingers. Some Masks have little mirrors on their person. The style of
the production has to allow for these' eccentricities. When the Mask is
used, theatre has to be theatrical, not just a 'slice of life'.

Once the Masks have learned their roles, and have mastered the
'This-is-for-the-first-time' trick, then they'll do more or less the
same thing each performance. It's silly to preset exactly how they
should move, but similar patterns will always appear. If a moth flies
in, maybe they'll be momentarily distracted and start chasing it, or
snapping at it as it flies past, but the actors then assert their control,
call in a mirror, and set the Mask back on its track again.

Tragic Masks

George Devine gave a second Mask class to the
writers' group, this time showing us the full, or 'Tragic' Mask. These
Masks cover the whole face and make the wearer feel safe (if he doesn't
feel claustrophobic) because there's no way his expression can betray
him. He can't look confused, or embarrassed, or scared, so he isn't.
Some students find a physical release for the first time when they
perform with their face covered, and it's usual to improvise with more
emotion. Thespis was said to have invented tragedy in this way, using
canvas cloths to cover the actors' faces. I once asked Michel Saint-
Denis how Copeau, his uncle, came to be interested in Mask work. 11
He said one of Copeau's students had been wooden and totally lacking
in absorption; all she worried about was whether the audience was
admiring her. In desperation Copeau made her repeat the scene with
a handkerchief in front of her face, and she relaxed, became expressive,
and was very moving.

If one of the greatest half Masks of the cinema is Chaplin, then one
of the greatest full Masks is Garbo. Critics raved about her face:
'. . . Her face, early called the face of the century, had an extraordin-
ary plasticity, a mirrorhke quality; people could see in it their own

MASKS AND TRANCE 185
conflicts and desires.' (Norman Zierold, Garbo, W. H. Allen, London,
197°-) People who worked with her noticed that her face didn't change.
Robert Taylor said: 'The muscles in her face would not move, and yet
her eyes would express exactly what she needed.' Clarence Brown said:
'I have seen her change from love to hate and never alter her facial
expression. I would be somewhat unhappy and take the scene again.
The expression still would not change. Still unhappy, I would go ahead
and say "Print it." And when I looked at the print, there it was. The
eyes told it all. Her face wouldn't change but on the screen would be that
transition from love to hate.' (Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By,
Sphere, 1973.)

Garbo had a stand-in who was identical to her, and who was said
to have 'everything that Garbo has except whatever it is Garbo has'.
What Garbo had was a body that transmitted and received. It was her
spine that should have been raved about: every vertebra alive and
separated so that feelings flowed in and out from the centre. She
responded spontaneously with emotion and warmth, and what she
felt, the audience felt, yet the information transmitted by the body
was perceived as emanating from the face. You can watch a marvel-
lous actor from the back of a big theatre, his face just a microdot on
the retina, and have the illusion you've seen every tiny expression.
Such an actor can make a wooden Mask smile, its carved lips tremble,
its painted brows narrow.

The reason usually given for the changes of expression that occur
in Mask work is that the Masks are asymetrical, and that as they move
about we see different angles. This may be true in a few cases, but if
you hold a Mask and move it about it won't smile knowingly, or seem
about to weep, or become filled with terror. It's only when a Mask is
being worn by a skilled performer that the expression changes. If you
buy a magazine with full-sized head and shoulders on the cover and
hold it in front of your face, very few Mask effects occur. If you tear
the cover off and strap it on your face the magic still won't work.
Only when you cut the neck and shoulders away, so that the angle
between this mask and the wearer's body can change with every head
movement, does it become a 'face'. We 'read' the body, and especially
the head-neck relationship, but we experience ourselves as reading the
Mask. If you look at the head-neck relationship in great paintings
you'll see amazing distortions which increase the emotional effect.
The angle between head and neck, and neck and body is crucial to
us. There are reports of crowds panicking with horror when they
witness public executions; they don't panic when the head is severed,

186 MASKS AND TRANCE

but they do when the executioner holds it up and turns it to face the

crowd. .

To some extent we can say that the half, or comic, Masks are low
status, and the full Tragic Masks are high status. If there are two
different types of Mask experience, then we should expect to find the
same phenomena in possession cults— and we do. Jane Belo writes:

'When the manifestations are abandoned and violent, they are
related to the exhibitions of riotous behaviour which break out at
cremations and in great crowds, when the habitual decorum is cast
aside. Other individuals who go into trance may seek a more quiescent
change, sitting immobile during a ritual sequence until the spirit of
the god "comes into" them, when they behave as an altered personality,
demanding and imperious.' (Trance in Bali.)

The first exercise George set involved an actor sitting in a chair,
putting on a full Mask with head lowered, and then raising the head as
if looking into the distance. It was interesting to see how much more
we did than was asked of us, either because we felt the need to 'act*,
i e to add something extra, or because we weren't used to doing any-
thing so simple; hands fumbled unnecessarily, the head wasn't
brought up smoothly, and it trembled. With the face covered every
movement of the body was emphasised.

When a full Mask is absolutely still the spectator stares at the face
like a person entranced. The art of the full Mask lies in moving the
Mask in such a way that the attention is never distracted away from the
face, by the body. This implies a method of acting, a style, that all
great tragedians master, whether they're wearing a Mask or not—
Duse for example, and almost certainly Rachel. When the student
first wears a full Mask his body betrays him, his posture isn't good
enough, he's hesitant, his 'space' is restricted. When the Mask is still,
or when it moves smoothly and decisively, or in slow motion, then
the room seems to fill with power. Invisible ice forms on the walls.
When the Mask does anything trivial, or moves in a trivial way, the

power gutters out. ,

Many students believe that the full Mask can only do a limited
number of things without turning off, but this is because of the
limitations in the performer's technique. A great Mask actor can do
anything, and still keep the Mask expressive and 'alive'. In Kuro-
sawa's Seven Samurai, when the peasants lose heart and start to scatter,
the leader of the Samurai-that great actor-runs to block their retreat
Running at full speed with drawn sword, his technique is still that of
the full Mask.

MASKS AND TRANCE 187

George said that learning the full Mask was as difficult as learning
to sing; that while a half Mask could spring into existence at the first
moment, the full Mask required a long training. The posture had to
be right, and the body had to be fully expressive.

I don't think George ever wrote about his Mask work, and I'm
embarrassed to be explaining his ideas for him, but I have found an
account by Jean Dorcy of Mask work at Copeau's school (Ecole de
Vieux-Colombier) in 1922 (The Mime, Robert Speller, New York,
1 961). He writes:

'What happens to the actor who puts on a mask? He is cut off from
the outer world. The night he deliberately enters allows him first to
reject everything that hampered him. Then, by an effort of concen-
tration, to reach a void, a state of un-being. From this moment
forwards, he will be able to come back to life and to behave in a new
and truly dramatic way.'

The Masks that Dorcy used were 'neutral' — 'mime' Masks. I don't
know at what point the Tragic Mask was introduced, but the tech-
nique was clearly based on the neutral Mask work. Here's Dorcy
explaining how he 'shoed' the Mask, i.e. put it on.

'Here are the rites I followed . . .

'A. Well seated in the middle of the chair, not leaning against the
back of the seat. Legs spaced to ensure perfect balance. Feet flat on
the ground.

'B. Stretch the right arm horizontally forward, shoulder high; it
holds the mask, hanging by its elastic. The left hand, also stretched
out, helps to shoe the mask, thumb holding the chin, index and second
finger seizing the opening of the mouth.

'C. Simultaneously, inhale, close the eyes and shoe the mask.

'In all this only the arms and hands are active. They carry out the
small movements necessary to fasten the mask on the face, arrange
the hair, verify the proper adjustment of the elastic so that the mask
will cling well and hold without slackness.

'D. Simultaneously, breathe and place forearms and hands on the
thighs. The arms, as well as the elbows, touch the torso, fingers not
quite reaching the knees.

'E. Open the eyes, inhale then, simultaneously, close the eyes, ex-
hale and bend the head forward. While bending the head, the back
becomes slightly rounded. In this phase, arms, hands, torso, and head
are completely relaxed.

'F. It is here in this position that the clearing of the mind occurs.
Repeat mentally or utter, if this helps, during the necessary time (2,

188 MASKS AND TRANCE

5, io, 25 seconds): "I am not thinking of anything, I am not thinking
of anything. . . ."

'If, through nervousness, or because the heart was beating too
strongly, the "I am not thinking of anything" was ineffective, concen-
trate on the blackish, grey, steel, saffron, blue, or other shade found
inside the eye, and extend it indefinitely in thought: almost always,
this shade blots out conscious thought.

'G. Simultaneously, inhale and sit upright, then exhale and open
your eyes.

'Now the mask actor, sufficiendy recollected, can be inhabited by
characters, objects, thoughts; he is ready to perform dramatically.

'This was my method. One of us (Yvonne Galli) achieved this
clearing of the mind, this preliminary state better and more rapidly.
Had she another Sesame? I have never asked for her technique.

'When the actor is not seated but standing, nothing changes;
however (see 'E'), the back should not be rounded, for the weight of
the head would draw the torso forward.

'All these phases are for beginners. Later the technique will be
altered '

Closing your eyes and 'looking' into the darkness of the eyelids is a
common trance-inducing technique. I used it when I wanted to study
my hypnagogic imagery. Notice that Dorcy leaves his body alone
except for those parts which he must move in order to put the Mask
on.

George set simple scenarios for his actors, and insisted that they
find a simple, direct way of moving, and that the Mask should be
presented to the audience. It wasn't good to turn away or to hold the
Mask at too sharp an angle. Once the technical aspects of a scene had
been mastered, he asked the actor to invent a tragic background for it.
A man lifting his head to look at the far horizon might imagine himself
looking over a battlefield of corpses, or the sea that had drowned his
sons. George didn't invent the 'given circumstances' and he didn't
ask what they were. It was a private matter. If the actor was brave
enough, then he would choose something that was profoundly up-
setting for him. If so then the Mask would transmit his grief to the
audience, and would seem to shine with magical intensity.

I've sometimes checked up on the lighting after a scene, because
I couldn't believe that a spotlight wasn't focused exacdy where the
Mask was standing, or a chance beam of sunlight wasn't leaking
through the blinds. This was the quality that George looked for in the
full-Mask work, a sort of ethereal radiance— actually I think a

MASKS AND TRANCE 189
'Gestalt' separation of figure from ground. An actor would remove a
Mask, very shaken, and George would say 'Ah! You felt something',
with approval. Such Masks he referred to as 'inhabited'— possessed
by the tragic spirit.

He set exercises involving more than one actor, but the technique
was always the same. Here are five exercises that he gave out on
duplicated sheets to a class at the Studio.

A. A statue—a mourner comes with flowers— on leaving kisses the
statue's hand — it comes to life — gets down from its pedestal — crushes
the mourner as if still of stone.

B. Two very old people dream of themselves as young — he as a
bird, she as a cat— they play— the cat finally kills the bird.

C. Two young people in love — in the sunshine — a storm rises —
she runs away in fright — he makes to go but she returns with a very
old face on her still young body.

D. A guilty person is sleepwalking — is visited by a ghost of his or
her victim — the ghost pursues, sending the victim mad.

E. A young girl takes poison to avoid a mismarriage — she dies on
the bed — her mother or nurse comes in and finds her dead.

George's Masks were stylised faces with an air of sadness about
them. They were beautiful objects to look at and handle. I used them
for several years myself until the Theatre asked for them back.
Eventually someone stole them.

I saw a film called David some years ago. It was made in 1951, and
was a Welsh contribution to the Festival of Britain — a documentary
about the life of a miner, a man called Griffiths, who had always
longed for education, and who had been injured in the mine and was
now working as a school caretaker. The part was played by the man
himself, and at a point when it seemed as if the dreams of the father
are about to be achieved by the student son, a telegram arrives. We
see the caretaker scrubbing out the school hall; about one-third of it is
done. The telegraph boy crosses the hall, gives him the telegraph and
waits for an answer. The caretaker reads the telegram, which tells
him of the death of his son; he expresses nothing, or rather does
nothing in order to express anything. He's changed, but it's impos-
sible to say how the change has been achieved. Probably his timing
alters. The boy leaves, and the caretaker returns to his job of scrub-
bing the other two-thirds of the hall.

If an actor had played the scene he would almost certainly have
tried to display his grief. The caretaker, acting out his own story,
underwent the experience again, and it's not anything I'll ever forget.

190 MASKS AND TRANCE

It's difficult to be sure of anything that one saw only once, many years
ago, but my memory is that it was like a Tragic Mask exercise, and I
use it as that. A Mask starts some action, the messenger interrupts.
The Mask reads the message and waves the messenger away, and then
continues the action. What the message says is for the actor to decide,
but it has to be something shattering to him.

Something happens to people in moments of great seriousness.
When Annigoni was painting the Queen she told him that usually she
feels like an ordinary woman, but that when she wears the robes of
state she 'becomes the Queen'. We all know how a wreath should be
placed on a memorial during a great ceremony: we may have to be
told where to stand, and when to move forward, but the way we
move and hold our bodies is instinctive. We know we mustn't do
anything trivial or repetitive. Our movements will be as simple as
possible. Our bodies will be straight. We won't hurry. There will be
a smoothness about us. The people you see standing around after
mine disasters, or similar tragedies, have a stillness and simplicity of
movement. They rise in status. They are straighter, they don't make
little nervous movements — not when the shock is on them — and I
would guess that they hold eye contacts for longer than normal.

It is this high-status seriousness which is typical of the full Mask.
I teach people to be still— if they can!— and I explain the type of
movements that diminish the power of the Mask, but I also have to
awaken feelings of grieving and seriousness. In moments of awe, or of
grief, something takes over the body and tells it what to do, how to
behave. The personality stops doing all the trivial things that help to
maintain 'normal consciousness'. Jean Dorcy's technique is clearly
intended to produce this sort of serious trance state; so was Michel
Saint-Denis's, and so was George's. A different kind of spirit is
involved from that which inhabits the half Mask.

I now have a number of full Masks which I occasionally use, but at
the moment I prefer 'photo' Masks. These are photographs of faces
that I cut out of magazines, and stick on to plastic backing so that the
sweat doesn't ruin them. In some ways these are the most amazing
Masks I've ever seen, and as they're easy to make you could experi-
ment yourself. Modern photography is of such high quality that you
can hardly believe that it's not a face you're watching. Also each Mask
has its own built-in lighting. People gasp when they see them, and get
frightened. Sometimes I've had to stop a class because we've all felt
sick. This happens if you work for a long time, say an hour, during
which the tensions can become unbearable.

MASKS AND TRANCE I9I

The students wearing the Masks feel completely safe, since they are
light, and don't even make the face feel confined. The gasps from the
onlookers add to the wearer's pleasure. Normally we keep altering
our faces to reassure other people. The effect is subliminal, but when
it's missing we can't understand the anxiety created in us. We continu-
ally reassure people by making unnecessary movements, we twitch, we
'get comfortable', we move the head about, and so on. When all such
reassurances are removed we experience the Mask as supernatural.

I start the actors against the wall which they lean on for support.
This means that they don't wobble, or shake. It's amazing how few
people can stand really still; yet nothing is more powerful than
absolute stillness on a stage. The first Masks I let them try won't have
eye-holes. Being blind makes the actor feel even safer, on the 'head-in-
the-sand' principle. I say things like 'Slide along the wall until you
find the actor playing the scene with you. Freeze. In your own time,
make a gesture and hold it. Slide down the wall. Huddle together and
be afraid of us. Always keep the Mask held like a shield between
your face and us. Laugh at us. Stand up. Get angry. Come towards us.
Point at someone who has mistreated you. . . .' and so on.

As the Masks approach the class it's normal to see people scrambling
out of their chairs to get away. They laugh nervously, but they move.
If I want to increase the power then I set a scene in which the actors
work out some fantasy that upsets them. Then they look at the Mask,
not thinking about it, but remembering the image. If they perform with
the image of the Mask in the forefront of their minds, then suddenly
the Mask blazes with power. In the old days actors in the Noh
Theatre might look at the Mask for an hour.

When actors insist on 'thinking' about the Mask, I tell them to
'attend' to it instead. I say, 'Imagine you're in a great forest and you
hear a sound you can't identify quite close to you. Is it a bear? Is it
dangerous? The mind goes empty as you stay motionless waiting for
the sound to be repeated. This mindless listening is like attending to
a Mask.' This usually works. If you attend to a Mask you'll see it
start to change — probably because your eyes are getting tired. Don't
stop these changes. The edges crawl about, it may suddenly seem like a
real face in your hands. Fine, don't lose the sensation, put the Mask on
gently and hold the image in your mind. If you lose it, take the Mask off.

A student at RADA worked out an elegant way of using the photo
Mask. He had the actors stand in a line facing the audience, and act out
a play in which a landlord raped a woman who wouldn't pay the rent.
Each Mask acted in its 'own space'. One Mask knocked at a 'door' and

192 MASKS AND TRANCE

another Mask answered a second 'door'. We saw two mimed 'doors',
but we put them together in the brain. The rape was weird: the land-
lord tore at the air in front of him, while the girl Mask two places
away from him defended herself from the imaginary attack. As he
sank to his knees, she sank back, so that the rape was enacted by
each person separately. Another class heard about this scene and
wanted to try it. Their play went wrong, the woman didn't react at all.
Then we saw that her Mask was disintegrating. It only had a card-
board backing, and her tears were dissolving it.

Four more actors tried the scene, but they chose a child Mask for
the woman, and then the actress knelt down, reducing her height, so
they decided to make it the rape of a child. The four characters were
the landlord, child, father, and social worker. They went through the
scene stage by stage in hideous detail, the landlord finding that Mum
and Dad were out, getting himself admitted, and so on. The actors
couldn't see each other, and the timing was often wrong, so that we
were having to correct the lack of synchronisation as well as the lack
of space : the landlord was making feeble copulatory movements while
the child was still being forced to the ground. When the landlord
panicked he ran on the spot, and then froze. When the father found
his daughter, the landlord's still figure was unbearable, even though
he was no longer 'in the scene'. My impression is that everyone was
weeping, but we couldn't really get the emotion out of us. We
couldn't really speak, or work. It was as if we had seen the actual event.

The actors could never have gone so 'deep' and been so serious if it
wasn't for the protection and anonymity of the Masks. Everyone
looked white. We agreed to end the class; there really wasn't any way
to continue.

You'll understand that these are students I knew very well. At first
no one will choose really terrible scenes, because secretly they don't
want to get upset— there's a point beyond which they aren't prepared
to suffer. As the group becomes more trusting and affectionate, they
will eventually follow wherever the Tragic Masks lead them.

I 4

Dangers

Many people express alarm about the 'dangers of
Mask work'. I think this is an expression of the general hostility to
trance and is unfounded. The 'magical' thinking that underlies the
fear can be shown by the fact that the presence of a doctor is thought

MASKS AND TRANCE 193
to make things OK. One of my first students was a brain surgeon, and
this made everyone very happy, although he knew no more about Mask
work than anyone else did.

People seem to be afraid of three things : (1) that the students will be
violent; (2) that the students will go 'mad'; (3) that the students will
refuse to remove the Mask when instructed (a combination of the
first two).

It's true that there are many reports of violent and frightening
'possessions'. Steward Wavell describes a ceremony in which Malayan
men were riding hobby-horses and becoming possessed by the spirits
of horses.

'One centaur had leapt towards a group of women gnashing his
teeth, pawing at the ground, kicking, snapping and biting, rushing
backwards and then leaping again. Men rushed forwards to drag the
centaur back, but his strength was phenomenal. Three times he was
grabbed and restrained but managed to break himself free. Two of the
women had fainted. One had been badly bitten. . . . Finally, the old
pawang, pressing forefinger and thumb on the centaur's temples, gave
a sharp jerk to the man's head which must have given a severe shock to
his spinal cord. The man recovered, looked dazed for a while, and the
dancing continued as if nothing had happened.

'The headman took the incident as a matter of course. Such out-
bursts sometimes occurred, he said. It was the bitten girl's fault: she
should not have been wearing a flower in her hair. A flower on a girl
was bound to excite any hantu (horse-god).' (Wavell, Butt and Epton,
Trances, Dutton, 1966.)

Jane Belo describes 'violence' occurring during Balinese ceremonies.
A man entered trance while dressed in a 'pig' costume of sugar-cane
fibre; while incarnating a pig-god he was insulted by someone who
cried out 'To the market!' The 'pig' attacked, and scattered the crowd.

'Then the pig turned and leaped down again on to the ground,
from a height of at least five feet, landed on all fours with as much
ease as if he'd been all his life a four-footed creature.

'Still angry, he attacked the overturned stone trough, butting it and
pushing it along the ground with his head. Men, seeing that he was
getting out of control, hurried to restrain him. Others brought great
jars of water which they poured in the centre of the court, making a

wet and muddy place, sloshy as a pigsty By this time most of the

fibre covering had come off* him, only the head and snout remaining.
Someone got close enough to him to tear this off, as they called out,
"Wallow, wallow!" '

194 MASKS AND TRANCE

The 'pig' went into the mud and rolled about in ecstasy, and then
a crowd of men grabbed him, 'precipitating a fit of powerful convul-
sions'. They poured water over him, and as he grew quiet they mas-
saged him. Then they carried him to the 'sleeping platform' and he
'woke up'.

Another example of a 'pig-god' going out of control also resulted
from an insult. Jane Belo writes:

'He [the pig] was rubbing himself along the wall of a building on
which dozens of people were standing. Suddenly he fell over and
began to cry dreadfully, beating the ground with his legs and arms.
Five or six men jumped up and tried to hold him. He was defending
himself fiercely. They put him on the mat and began to massage him,
but he cried and shouted and had dreadful convulsions.

'It seemed that one of the children standing on the pavilion had
spat at him. ... At last he became calmer and fell asleep for a long
time. There was no feed brought for him and no mud bath, as we saw
before, I suppose because of this accident. The crowd was very an-
noyed by the sudden end of it, and all went home.

'G.N. noted that many people had called out: "Who was that who
was so very insulting? . . . It's not right for him to come out of trance
yet, he hasn't had enough of playing. When he's had enough, as soon
as he's caught, he'll come out of trance." '

Such scenes do not take place in Mask classes because we don't
require them. Notice that in the above examples the 'pigs' remain
pigs, and the 'horses' are still horses. The violence is completely in
character, and is approved and expected. The rules are broken, the
violence occurs, and the group agrees that it's justified. If the violence
wasn't 'in character' then the performer would be removed. In the
West Indies people who are really violent, that is, who don't get
possessed properly, are told to see psychiatrists, just as they would be
if they acted 'crazily' in any other situation. The 'violence' is part of
the game.

Masks can be terrifying but the ability to inspire terror doesn t
mean they're actually dangerous, not even the cannibal Masks of
Vancouver Island. Here's Ruth Benedict :

'That which distinguished the Cannibal was his passion for human
flesh. His dance was that of a frenzied addict enamoured of the "food"
that was held before him, a prepared corpse carried on the outstretched
arms of a woman. On great occasions the Cannibal ate the bodies of
slaves who had been killed for the purpose.'

This 'Cannibal' used to bit chunks out of the spectators— an

MASKS AND TRANCE 195
interesting example of audience participation: 'Count was kept of the
mouthfuls of skin the Cannibal had taken from the arms of the on-
lookers, and he took emetics until he had voided them. He often did
not swallow them at all.' (Patterns of Culture, Mentor 1946.)

Obviously this wasn't something the actor went into casually, but
the cannibalism was planned. It's alarming to hear of people going
berserk and biting chunks out of people, but such behaviour had
complete approval, and there's nothing to suggest that the Cannibal
was out of control.

Phillip Druckner, in Indians of the Northwest Coast (American
Museum Science Books, 1963), surmises that the 'corpse' that was
eaten may have been faked (a bear carcase with a carved head). As to
the biting of spectators he says : 'This was not a trick, although it is
said that the dancer actually cut off the skin with a sharp knife con-
cealed in his hand. The persons to whom this was done were not
selected at random — it was arranged beforehand that they were to
allow themselves to be bitten, and they were subsequently rewarded
with special gifts.'

It would be easier to argue that it's the Masks who are in danger,
not the onlookers. Ingrid once put on a Mask and a fur coat at a party
and someone came up and hit her. Wild Pehrt, an Austrian 'Demon'
Mask, sometimes got torn to pieces by the onlookers. (There are several
stone crosses around Salzburg where Wild Pehrts are said to be buried.)

The violence that occurs is the violence permitted by custom (in a
way this is true of all violence). Suppose I were to introduce 'handlers'
whose job was to control anyone who went berserk. Violence would
then be part of the game, and permitted. Mask teachers get the kind
of behaviour that they prepare for.

I was told a horrifying story (in Alberta) of a schoolteacher who got
her class to make Masks. They put them on, and picked up a boy and
tried to throw him out of a window: 'Only the timely arrival of a more
experienced teacher prevented a tragedy.' No doubt by now the story
has grown to include the mass suicide of the class after raping the
teacher, but in fact nothing violent seems to have happened at all.

'Was anyone actually hurt?' I asked.

'No, thank heavens.'

'Why did they pick on the boy?'

'That's the strange thing, he was the most popular boy in the class.'
'What exactly did the teacher say to them?'
'She said they were to do exactly what the Masks made them feel
like doing — ah, and that they were to hate someone.'

I96 MASKS AND TRANCE

'Did they get the boy out of the window?'

'Fortunately, the other teacher came in in time.'

The real story was obviously one of an inexperienced teacher
panicking. In fact they must have been a nice group of children, since
they chose to 'hate' the most popular boy. In my schooldays I remem-
ber boys being hung out of high windows by their ankles. These boys
didn't even get anyone through the window. No one was trying to
murder anyone. They had just been given permission to misbehave,
and that's what they were doing. My advice is that if you understand
the nature of the transaction between you and the class, and if you go
into the work gently, Mask work is much less dangerous than, say,
gymnastics.

I did once have a Mask hold up a chair as if it was going to attack
me. I walked towards it, said 'Take the Mask off', and held the chair
while the actor took off the Mask. My confidence stemmed from the
fact that there was no reason why the actor should attack me. He relied
on my authority to be in a trance in the first place.

A teacher who is secretly frightened of the Masks will teach himself,
and his students, to avoid Mask work. I know several teachers who
say that they'll 'never touch Mask work again', but they won't tell me
what happened! If anyone had got their arm broken, or had been
rushed off to a mental hospital, then they'd tell me. What must have
happened is that the teacher's status suffered. He got himself into a
situation he couldn't understand or control, and it deeply disturbed
and embarrassed him.

I once saw a Mask cut its hand slightly because a mirror it was
tapping at suddenly smashed. That was my fault for not anticipating
the danger. I saw a girl hit hard on the bottom by another girl who
disliked her, and who obviously used the Mask as an excuse— similar
exploitations of trance states are reported from Haiti. The only
serious injury I've heard of in a drama class occurred during a
'method' improvisation (Margaretta D'Arcy broke her arm). I've
never known physical or mental injury to result from a Mask class.

Masks may cause physical harm when the teacher is believed to be
in control, but in fact has been distracted. The Mask may be depend-
ing on the teacher to say 'Take the Mask off' When the instruction
doesn't come, as a rule the Mask turns itself off, but it might, I sup-
pose, make an error, and hit harder than it 'intends'. We have the para-
dox that the Masks are safest when the teacher is absent, since the
actors then operate their own controls.

As for the fear of madness, I would answer that the ability to

MASKS AND TRANCE 197
become possessed is a sign of correct social adjustment, and that
really disturbed people censor themselves out. Either they can't do it,
or they're too afraid to even try. People who feel themselves at risk
avoid situations where they feel likely to 'go to pieces'. Compared to
marriage, appearing on a TV show, family quarrels, playing rugby,
being fired from one's job or other stressful social experiences, the
Mask is very gentle and makes few demands. Ordinary people can
face the death of people they love, or their house burning down, with-
out having their sanity threatened. The fear that the Mask will some-
how drive people out of their minds stems from the taboo against
trance states.

In a paper on 'The Failure to Eliminate Hypothesis' P. C. Wason
described an experiment in which students were asked to guess the
rule that had been used to generate a given series of numbers. One
student offered no hypothesis at all, but instead developed 'psychotic
symptoms . . . and had to be removed by ambulance'. No one would
suggest that Wason shouldn't have continued his experiment, but I'm
sure that after a similar incident Mask work would have been stopped
immediately. When a student cracked up during a summer school at
which I was teaching, everyone went around saying 'What a good job
she didn't take part in the Mask work'!

The truth is that in acting class, improvisation class, and Mask class
we meet opposition from people who believe, in the teeth of all the
evidence, that emotional abreaction is 'wrong'. Many other cultures
have encouraged the 'loose upper lip', but we even try to suppress
grieving. England is full of bereaved people who have never dis-
charged their grief and who sit around like stones. We are even
encouraged to hit people when they get hysterical !

As for actors refusing to remove the Mask, it's never happened to
me in the way people mean, although I imagine it could happen.
There are reports of people in clinical hypnosis who have 'stayed
asleep' (though not for long!) but we have to ask what people would
gain from such behaviour. If someone refused to come out of trance
during a public hypnosis show, then he'd be put in a dressing-room
to sleep it off, and would miss all the fun. In clinical hypnosis, the
only purpose of such an action would lie in the opportunity to em-
barrass and confuse the hypnotist. If the hypnotist remained calm,
then there'd be no pay-off. In case of any trouble with people refusing
to remove the Mask, all you'd have to do would be to say 'OK, fine,
good,' and keep your status. Then the refusal would be pointless.
Always remember that unless the subject is crazy, or freaked out on

I98 MASKS AND TRANCE

drugs, then his trance has a purpose, and exists because of the support
of the teacher and the rest of the class. Go close to the Mask, put your
arm around its shoulders. Your physical proximity to an entranced
person usually switches Masks off.

Sometimes a student will be very upset, and will keep the Mask on
to hide tears. Put your arm round such people, lead them to the side
and let them sit down. I remember a man in his fifties who turned
into a 'monster' and obviously felt extremely violent. He lifted a chair
in slow motion as if to smash it to the floor. I walked in towards him,
saying 'It's all right, take the Mask off', and he put the chair down and
leaned on it for support. I put my arm around him and said 'It's all
right, it's all right.' He was shaking. (When someone is very upset it
usually helps to hold them rather firmly— the message you give is that
you're willing to be close to them and to support them. Patting people
who are upset isn't really much use. It's more like trying to push them
away.)

Gradually this student relaxed, and then took his Mask off. He
explained that he'd always felt that he was a gentle person, and that all
his life he'd been unable to understand how people could do violent
things; I explained that this Mask always made people feel like that,
but he was insistent that the feelings were 'his'. I pointed out that he
couldn't be more violent than the rest of us were, and that we all had
great extremes of emotion locked away inside us. I added, privately,
that he should remember the experience, and that maybe he ought to
change his view of himself a little. Surely it was less lonely to know
that he was actually just like the rest of us.

During a weekend course a student went into a very deep trance,
and became a little old man consumed by paroxysms of lust. He seemed
to blaze with an inner light. One of the old gods had returned to earth.
The student was shaken, but quite calm until the other students
talked to him during lunch and made him appreciate how odd it had
been. I had to reassure him that he wasn't going crazy and that the
Mask had been very successful.

Good drama teaching, of any kind, threatens to alter the personality.
The better the teacher the more powerful the effects. In any actor
training we work in the voice and the body, and feelings of 'disinte-
gration' are likely to occur. I remember asking an actress to mime an
animal with her eyes shut, and to let her hands just move 'by them-
selves'. Suddenly she hallucinated a real animal! It's more difficult to
handle this sort of situation. I told her that it did sometimes happen to
people, and that it meant she had become very absorbed. At least in

MASKS AND TRANCE 199
Mask work you can pass the responsibility over to the Mask. The
problem is not that one's students really do go crazy, but that they
may withdraw from work they regard as dangerous. They judge the
'danger' by the calmness, or jumpiness of the teacher. In reality the
work is very therapeutic, but in this culture any irrational experience
gets defined as 'mad'.

The Mask teacher has to develop a coolness, a therapeutic bland-
ness. There is nothing his students can do that will surprise or dis-
concert him. Like a meditation teacher, he conveys the feeling that
nothing really alarming is happening. If he doesn't project stability
and confidence, then his students will be frightened away. Here's the
Zen Master Yasutani talking with a distressed student.

Student : (Crying) Just about five minutes ago I had a frightful
experience. Suddenly I felt as though the whole
universe had crashed into my stomach, and I burst
out crying. I can't stop crying even now.
Yasutani: Many strange experiences take place when you do
zazen, some of them agreeable, some of them, like
your present one, fearful. But they have no
particular significance. If you become elated by a
pleasant occurrence and frightened by a dreadful
one, such experiences may hinder you. But if you
don't cling to them such experiences will naturally
pass away.
Again, with another student:

Yasutani : If I were to cut off my hand or my leg, the real I
would not be decreased one whit. Strictly speaking,
this body and mind are also you but only a fraction.
The essence of your true nature is no different from
that of this stick in front of me or this table or this
clock — in fact every single object in this universe.
When you directly experience the truth of this, it
will be so convincing that you will exclaim 'How
true!' because not only your brain but all your
being will participate in this knowledge.
Student: (Suddenly crying) But I am afraid! I don't know

what of, but I am afraid !
Yasutani : There is nothing to fear. Just deepen and deepen
the questioning until all your preconceived notions
of who and what you are vanish, and all at once you
will realise that the entire universe is no different

200 MASKS AND TRANCE

from yourself. You are at a crucial stage. Don't
retreat— march on! (Kapleau, The Three Pillars of
Zen, Beacon, 1967.)
If you were to use Mask work literally as 'therapy', and to try and
psychoanalyse the content of scenes, then I've no doubt you could
produce some amazing conflicts, and really screw everyone up. Mask
work, or any spontaneous acting, can be therapeutic because of
the intense abreactions involved; but the teacher's job is to keep the
student safe, and to protect him so that he can regress. 12 This is the
opposite of the Freudian view that people regress in search of greater
security. In acting class, students only regress when they feel pro-
tected by a high-status teacher.

When the students begin Mask work, and 'characters' inhabit them
for the first time, it's normal for everything to be extremely grotesque.
The spirits often seem straight out of the paintings of Hieronymus
Bosch (Bosch himself acted in plays in which Masks were used).
Grotesque and frightening things are released as soon as people begin
to work with spontaneity. Even if a class works on improvisation every
day for only a week or so, then they start producing very 'sick' scenes :
they become cannibals pretending to eat each other, and so on. But
when you give the student permission to explore this material he very
soon uncovers layers of unsuspected gentleness and tenderness. It is no
longer sexual feelings and violence that are deeply repressed in this
culture now, whatever it may have been like in fin-de-siicle Vienna.
We repress our benevolence and tenderness.

NOTES

1. There are other accounts of Chaplin's discovery of Charlie, and I've
seen an early film in which Chaplin plays 'Charlie' without the moustache,
but there's no doubt that Chaplin experienced the character as stemming
from the change in his appearance, rather than from a more intellectual
process.

2. Nina Epton met a Balincse who told her that before he left to be edu-
cated in Europe he could 'leap into the other world' of trance in twenty
seconds, but that even if he can succeed these days it takes at least half an
hour. (Wavell, Butt and Epton, Trances, Allen and Unwin, 1967.)

3. The psychologist Wilhelm Reich developed the idea of 'character
armour', which he said was 'A protection of the ego against external and
internal dangers. As a protective mechanism which has become chronic
it can rightly be called armour ... in unpleasurable situations the armour-
ing increases, in pleasurable situations it decreases. The degree of charac-
ter mobility, the ability to open up to a situation or to close up against it,

MASKS AND TRANCE 201

constitutes the difference between the healthy and the neurotic character
structure.' (Character Analysis, translated by V. R. Carfagno, Vision
Press, 1973.)

He might have been talking about good and bad acting. Drama students
who are 'tight' and 'inflexible' and 'alone' are able to receive and transmit
only a very narrow range of feeling. They experience muscle tension as
'acting'. In The Function of the Orgasm (translated by T. P. Wolfe,
Panther, 1968), Reich says:

"The facial expression as a whole — independent of the individual parts

has to be observed carefully. We know the depressed face of the melan-
cholic patient. It is peculiar how the expression of flaccidity can be as-
sociated with a severe chronic tension of the musculature. There are
people with an always artificially beaming face; there are "stiff" and
"sagging" cheeks. Usually, the patients are able to find the corresponding
expression themselves, if the attitude is repeatedly pointed out and de-
scribed to them, or shown to them by imitating it. One patient with "stiff"
cheeks said: "My cheeks are as if heavy with tears." Suppressed crying
easily leads to a masklike stiffness of the facial musculature. At an early
age, children develop a fear of "faces" which they used to delight in
making; they are afraid because they are told that if they make a face
it'll stay that way, and because the very impulses they express in their
grimaces are impulses for which they are likely to be reprimanded or
punished. Thus they check these impulses and hold their faces "rigidly
under control".*

I remember my own friends 'changing' during their adolescence. One

grew an RAF moustache and spoke with a phoney officer-type voice

in adult life he actually became an Air Force officer and got a medal in the
Suez fiasco. Other friends modelled themselves on sportsmen, or film
stars, or adults they admired. Props like a walking-stick, a pipe, or an
individual choice of clothing help to support an identity. If you shave off
a beard you 'feel' different. A bride in her regalia is supposed to 'become a
bride'. Oscar Wilde dressed as a convict on Clapham Junction was
defenceless in a way that he would never have been in his own clothes.
The appearance, and especially the face fixes the personality. This is why
plastic surgery has been suggested as a way of reforming criminals— the
opposite approach to outdated nose-slicing. In Vietnam, terrible burns to
the body are reported to produce relatively little change in the personality.
Relatively minor facial burns have severe consequences.
4. Here is a description by Melvin Powers of how he introduces the 'eye
test'. It shows the nature of the transaction very clearly.

'It is suggested to the subject that at the count of three he will be un-
able to open his eyes. Let's say that you had done this, and that the sub-
ject, in spite of this suggestion, has opened his eyes. What is to be done? . . .
He may feel that he is not a good subject, or worse still, that you are not a
good hypnotist, since he had so easily opened his eyes, when he had been
challenged to do so. It is at this point . . . that so many hypnotists lose
their subjects. ... To avoid this: after the subject has closed his eyes,
continue to give him suggestions that he is in a deep state of relaxation,
and that as you (the hypnotist) complete a count of three, he, the subject,

202 MASKS AND TRANCE

will move deeper and deeper into the ease of the hypnotic state. Begin
your procedure. Take a great deal of time before you finally use the "eye
test". ... At this point, give the subject the following suggestions: "When
I complete the count of three you will open your eyes, and look at the
crystal ball. Then after I give you the suggestion and when I complete
the count of three again, you will fall into a very deep, sound hypnotic
sleep." 1

If this doesn't work Powers says : 'Should the test fail the first time, or
even the second, be certain not to show the least sign of annoyance. After
a pause proceed again in a matter-of-fact and businesslike manner so as
to ensure the fullest co-operation on the part of the subject. It is very
important that the subject be made to understand that the failure to close
the eyes was not an actual test but merely a part of the induction pro-
cedure. . . . The subject feels that the difficulty lies in the fact that he has
not as yet been adequately conditioned. This conviction is a much health-
ier one than the recognition that the hypnosis has been a failure, since he
isn't aware that he has been exposed to hypnosis at all. . . . Tell him that
at the next attempt he will be more responsive.' (Advanced Self-Hypnosis,
Thorsons, 1962.)

5. Here's a fourteenth-century English meditation teacher describing the
'one word' technique. He says : 'A naked intention directed to God, and
himself alone, is wholly sufficient. . . . The shorter the word the better,
being more like the working of the Spirit. A word like "God" or "Love".
Choose which you like, or perhaps some other, so long as it is of one
syllable. And fix this word fast to your heart, so that it is always there come
what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike. With
this word you will hammer the cloud and the darkness about you. With
this word you will suppress all thought under the cloud of forgetting. So
much so that if ever you are tempted to think of what it is you are seeking,
this one word will be sufficient answer. And if you would go on to think
learnedly about the significance and analysis of that same word, tell
yourself that you would have it whole, and not in bits and pieces.' (The
Cloud of Unknowing, translated by Clifton Wolters, Penguin, 1961.)

Naming everything that you are doing also interferes with the 'voice
in the head' : 'I am breathing. I am thinking about breathing. I am notic-
ing a bird. I am feeling the weight of my arm on the chair. . . .' This
doesn't suppress verbalisation, but it diverts it.

Dancing to repetitive rythms is trance-inducing. People report that the
body seems to be moving by itself as they move into the trance state.
Drummers at possession cults drum louder and with more syncopation in
order to 'throw people over the edge'.

Other methods involve weakening the ego by drugs, by increasing the
excitement so that the subject is emotionally exhausted, by spinning the
person round and round and inducing giddiness. One method reported
from the West Indies involves smashing people on the head with a sacred
brick. When Professor Eysenck says that only such-and-such a percentage
of the population can enter trance, one wonders if he has really tried all
the methods.

6. In clinical hypnosis a reluctance to perform has been observed, but

MASKS AND TRANCE 203

this is surely because there's no pay-off. The hypnotist isn't suggesting
dramatic scenes to play, and there's no audience to reward them. Hilgard
writes:

'I asked a young woman subject who was practising appearing awake
while hypnotised to examine some interesting objects in a box on a table
at the far end of the room and to comment to me on them as if she were
not hypnotised. She was quite reluctant to make this effort, eventually
starting to do it with a final plea : "Do you really want me to do this? I'll
do it if you say so." '

Another subject of Hilgard said: 'Once I was going to swallow, but I
decided it wasn't worth the effort. At one point I was trying to decide if
my legs were crossed, but I couldn't tell, and I didn't quite have the
initiative to find out.' Another subject said: 'I panic in an open-ended
situation where I am not given specific directions. I like very definite
suggestions from the hypnotist.' Hilgard comments: 'Thus the planning
function, while not entirely lost, is turned over very largely to the hypno-
tist, willingly and comfortably, with some annoyance being shown when
the subject is asked to take responsibility for what he has to do.' (Ernest
R. Hilgard, The Experience of Hypnosis, Harcourt Brace, 1968.)

7. There's something very odd about the idea that spirits enter at the
neck. This belief crops up all over the place. For example, here's Ena
Twigg, a medium, describing how she enters trance.

'I get a sensation at the back of my neck, right at the top of the spine.
It's as if there was a blockage. I may be sitting, giving clairaudience or
clairvoyance, and I feel myself gradually subdued.'

8. Morton Sobell found that the size of a mirror was very important
during his years of imprisonment on Alcatraz.

'On the Rock we had only small five-by-seven-inch shaving-mirrors;
there were no others. Somehow the size of the mirror seemed to be
critical in self-recognition, probably because the larger mirror allowed me
to see my face as a part of my head and my whole body. Ordinarily we
correlate all these images, because they are all available to us. On the Rock
this was not true.' (On Doing Time, Charles Scribner, 1974.)

9. Here are some of Goethe's observations (from his Travels in Italy) on
the astonishing way Mask behaviour can be reinforced by the crowd.

'The masks begin to multiply. Young men dressed in the holiday attire
of the women of the lowest class, exposing an open breast and displaying
an impudent self-complacency, are mostly the first to be seen. They caress
the men they meet, allow themselves all familiarities with the women they
encounter, as being persons the same as themselves, and for the rest do
whatever humour, wit or wantonness suggests. . . .

'With rapid steps, declaiming as before a court of justice, an advocate
pushes through the crowd. He bawls up at the windows, lays hold of
passers-by masked or unmasked, threatens every person with a process,
impeaches this man in a long narration with ridiculous crimes and
specifies to another the list of his debts. He rates the women for their
coquetries, the girls for the number of their lovers. He appeals by way of
proof to a book he carries about with him, producing documents as well,
and setting everything forth with a shrill voice and fluent tongue. When

204 MASKS AND TRANCE

you fancy he is at an end he is only beginning, when you think he is leav-
ing he turns back. He flies at one without addressing him, he seizes hold
of another who is already past. Should he come across a brother of his

profession, the folly rises to its height

'The quakers show themselves in the character of tasteless dandies.
They hop about on their toes with great agility, and carry about large
black rings without glass to serve them in the way of opera-glasses, with
which they peer into every carriage, and gaze up at all windows. Usually
they make a stiff bow, and, especially on meeting each other, express their
job by hopping several times straight up into the air, uttering at the same
time a shrill, piercing, inarticulate cry, in which the consonants "brr"
prevail. . . .

'When four or five girls have once caught a man on whom they have
designs, there is no deliverance for him. The throng prevents his escape,
and let him turn how he will, the besom is under his nose. To defend
himself in earnest against such provocations would be a very dangerous
experiment, seeing the masks are inviolate and under the special pro-
tection of the watch. . . .

'No coach passes with impunity, without suffering at the hands of
some maskers or other. No foot passenger is secure from them. An abbot
in black dress becomes a target for missiles on all hands; and seeing that
gypsum and chalk always leave their mark wherever they alight, the
abbot soon gets spotted all over with white and grey.' (Translated by
A. J. W. Morrison and Charles Nesbit, G. Bell and Sons.)

10. 'What I will say is this: See that in no sense you withdraw into
yourself. And, briefly, I do not want you to be outside or above, behind or
beside yourself either.

' "Well," you will say, "where am I to be? Nowhere according to
you!" And you will be quite right! "Nowhere" is where I want you! Why,
when you are "nowhere" physically, you are "everywhere" spiritually.'
(The Cloud of Unknowing — see note 5.)

11. George had an extract from Saint-Denis's book Theatre: The Redis-
covery of Style (Theatre Art Books, New York, i960) handed out to his
students at the studio. Here it is : 'This silent improvisation culminated in
the use of masks, full-face masks of normal human size, simple and har-
monious masks representing the four ages of man: the adolescent, the
adult, mature middle age and old age. In getting the students to wear
masks, we were not aiming at aesthetic results nor was it our intention to
revive the art of mime. To us, a mask was a temporary instrument which
we offered to the curiosity of the young actor, in the hope that it might
help his concentration, strengthen his inner feelings, diminish his self-
consciousness, and lead him to develop his powers of outward expression.

'A mask is a concrete object. When you put it on your face you receive
from it a strong impulse which you have got to obey. But the mask is also
an inanimate object which the personality of the actor will bring to life.
As his inner feelings accumulate behind the mask, so the actor's face re-
laxes. His body, which is made more expressive by the very immobility of
the mask, will be brought to action by the strength of inner feeling.

'Once the actor has acquired the elementary technique that is de-

MASKS AND TRANCE 205

manded by wearing a mask, he will begin to realise that masks dislike
agnation, that they can only be animated by controlled, strong, and
utterly simple actions which depend upon the richness of the inner life
within the calm and balanced body of the performer. The mask absorbs
the actor's personality from which it feeds. It warms his feelings and cools
his head. It enables the actor to experience, in its most virulent form, the
chemistry of acting: at the very moment when the actor's feelings are at
their height, beneath the mask, the urgent necessity of controlling his
physical actions compels him to detachment and lucidity.

'Submission to the lesson of the mask enables an actor of talent to
discover a broad, inspired and objective style of acting. It is a good
preparatory school for tragedy and drama in its greatest styles. Scenarios
using up to three actors were drawn from striking dramatic moments in
classical tragedies and dramas. Further than this silent improvisation
cannot go.'

12. I had to comfort someone who was a student of a student of mine —
neither of whom had been trained; the first had only been in a play I
directed. She writes: 'My Mask was white and immediately grabbed my
interest. As I stared I felt my face changing into his, a mildly smiling,
very open face.'

She then played a scene together with another, rather frightening Mask.

'I walked into the closet and shut the door. Immediately my fear
changed to terror — I was trapped. I knelt down holding the door shut
tightly, but I knew his form would soon fill the window. I couldn't stand
that, so just as his coat came into view in a corner of the window I pulled
my head down. I was screaming. I did so for a long time till finally I felt
that surely by now my director would have stopped G [the other Mask].
As I stepped out I was grabbed by that horrible-faced creature, it was still
there till finally I ripped my Mask off and screamed, "I'm taking the
Mask off." I was very happy with my Mask, how simple it was to get into
(the easiest it's ever been) but very annoyed otherwise. I was annoyed by
not having someone there who knew enough to save me, my Mask, from
the fear, from not having someone say "Stop! Take the Mask off. . . ."
The Mask was very open, and would be anxious to take whatever was
prepared for it. It was vulnerable. The other Mask fed on its fear. The
condition was like being hypnotised yet not unaware of surroundings or
real things but still in the hypnotic state— doing very different things,
moving, making sounds, freedom to do things in another . . . what? Face?
State? Can't find the word.'

She was as upset as if the event had been real. I would agree with her
that she should have been protected. It's the first time she had worn the
Mask. If she had been through other emotional scenes, then it might have
been OK to let her go through it. She would have been upset, but she
wouldn't have felt hostile. The effect of allowing her to experience the
'terror" is likely to make her more inhibited, not less. All Mask work should
be graded.

Appendix

The Waif

Here are some earlier notes also by Ingrid :

'I'm writing this about two weeks after my first experience with
the Waif; it seems like I've known her much longer. We've fantasised
about her past history and believe that she's spent most of her life in an
orphanage, until one night she played with matches and burned the
whole place down. Since then she's spent her time rather aimlessly
collecting things like used contraceptives and old bottle-tops which
she found in the park. I suppose that the making of relationships with
other people is going to be one of the turning-points of her life.

'The first thing she became attached to was a blue balloon which
she clutches firmly in her sticky fingers. At first she was very shy of
the other Masks and didn't really know how to make friends.

'One day she was sent to visit Grandfather, who at that time was
just known as "the angry man that hit people". When she arrived she
found a small brown teddy bear lying on the table, which she im-
mediately became attached to and claimed for herself. At that point
Grandfather, who had been growling in the background like an old
rheumatic dog, leaped on the Waif from behind and snatched the
bear away. This produced loud wailing noises and tears.

'For the Waif the teddy was perfect— soft, fluffy, something to
clutch and fumble. Contact with objects made her more secure.
Having the teddy snatched away was the most violently upsetting
thing that had happened to her up to that point.

'I remember Ingrid coming back into focus and feeling real tears
and terror and thinking "Christ, this is ridiculous— when I take the
Mask off everyone will see that I've been crying, that I really am
upset", but I couldn't stop the feelings. It was as if the Waif's experi-
ence had triggered off a deep emotional response in myself, as if a part
of me was watching the trauma but could do nothing to stop it. It's
very difficult to say whether it was "me" that was in a bad state to-
wards the end, but I'm certain that if I hadn't been wearing the Mask,
i.e. playing a small girl who had her teddy taken away, I would have
"felt" nothing, only acted being upset. The Waif could never "act"
her responses because her emotional life is so real and alive. After this

APPENDIX 207

Mask session I realised to what extent I'd learned to repress my
feelings, especially when things make me unhappy.

'Soon after this Keith arranged a "nice" scene where Grandfather
returned the teddy. Her happiness at getting it back was equally in-
tense. And Grandfather became a very important person for her.

'Loves sweets. Was given a grape and it kept falling out of her
mouth. She doesn't seem to have any teeth— can only suck, smacking
tongue and palate together.

Tt was a long time before she realised she was being watched. She
didn't seem to mind the audience providing they didn't get too close.
Keith is a good friend — always seems to recognise his presence and to
direct some of the things she says to him. I don't get this with other
Masks.

'Speech: the "smacking" or "sucking" of her top teeth over bottom
lip was the first noise she made— as she became more confident her
favourite noise was "cor". When she was happy she also made a short,
hard "ha" and "hee" sound. Learning short words like "sit" "stand"
and "sweet" wasn't difficult, and she was eager to learn. It wasn't
long before she was able to learn "Mary had a little lamb" but she
always made up the end to suit herself. She was puzzled by words
like "fleece" and "bound" and didn't seem able to accept them —
probably why she made up half the rhyme.

Mary had a little lamb
It was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
She had a little lamb.
'This was one of her versions, although I'd have to do it with the
Mask to make sure. She learned to count up to ten before learning the
rhyme. Her motive I think was because there was an audience, and
as she is a bit of an exhibitionist, it was nice to do. Being rewarded
with sweets was also good.'

Three Dreams

Some dreams announce themselves as messages.
There's nothing casual about them. You wake up and they're com-
pletely vivid in your mind, and you keep thinking about them. Here
are three such dreams.

My family are eating rubber eggs and they call me over to eat mine.
The surface is cracked, and I can see deep into the disgusting interior.
I put my egg on a high shelf and leave it there; but my family are
eating theirs, a little slowly but with a pretence of enjoying them.

208 APPEKDIX

A treasure is assembled for me by my teachers. The diamonds are
glass and the pearls plastic and the gold is tarnished. I stand guard
over the treasure, until I realise it's junk and go far away.

There is a box that we are forbidden to open. It contains a great
serpent and once opened this monster will stream out forever. I lift
the lid, and for a moment it seems as if the serpent will destroy us ;
but then it dissipates into thin air, and there, at the bottom of the box,
is the real treasure.